


Analemmata

by Fitz_Empress



Series: Analemmata Series [1]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Dyson Arrays, Gen, Heavily Inspired By The Emperor's New Groove, In Your Empire Emphasizing All Your Non-Humans, Llamas, Space Andean Culture, Space Colonialism, Thrawn Remembers That He's Not Actually Human, Traditional Handicrafts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fitz_Empress/pseuds/Fitz_Empress
Summary: Grand Admiral Thrawn is sent to determine why an Imperial construction project (linked somehow to Project Stardust) is facing unacceptable delays. What should be a simple investigation becomes more complicated upon a visit to a nearby planet.





	1. Arrival at the Palpatinopolis

**Author's Note:**

> Although there's not really any violence very graphically depicted in this chapter, I can't say the same for the rest of the work (when it's written and uploaded). I will be sure to update content warnings as they come along.
> 
> I do not own anything related to Star Wars; its characters and themes are merely being played with for my amusement. I most certainly do not own a llama, as I don't have the backyard space.
> 
> If you want to know where this is in Rebels-and-2017-Thrawn-series-canon, I have no idea whatsoever. Kind of...shoehorn it wherever you want, you know?

There had never been many stellar engine complexes in the Empire, or even in the Galactic Republic, mostly for reasons of economics. Even basic stellar sail net arrays were expensive to maintain, and there was always the risk of the star going nova. Under best-case scenarios, the construction period could last for decades, if not centuries. The Chiss Ascendancy had been constructing stellar engine complexes since time immemorial, and even when adjusting for the Ascendancy calendar being twice the length of the Imperial standard calendar, one complex surrounding a small-to-midsize star took two and a half standard decades to complete. And this was after centuries of practice. 

The Empire’s complexes, for reasons Thrawn had never been able to comprehend, took substantially longer to construct, and were usually bedeviled by faults and graft. For example, the stellar engine complex called Palpatinopolis had been under construction since the blockade of Naboo; Emperor Palpatine had simply renamed the project upon his taking power. Aside from this narcissistic quirk, the Emperor had left the complex alone, for the most part, allowing Krennic and Erso to later scavenge it like a pack of Jawas. Its construction was novel, as stellar engine complexes go; a cable net made of stellar sail material had been slung around a midsize star, held taut by two energy refining satellites, and statites with their flapping stellar sails whirled on the cable tracks to and fro like the small, trailing-feathered birds that darted over the planet below. 

(The Ascendancy’s engineers would have turned up their noses at it and deemed it unfit even for an uninhabited ice planet’s dying dwarf star; but the Empire was proud of it, somehow. Thrawn had long since moved past culture shock, but what the Empire accepted still astonished him after decades of living there.) 

Habitat rings and transport orbs for the complex’s workers were flung about the statites and cable nets using stellar gravity assists, a peculiar-bordering-on-foolish decision that had contributed to the high casualty rate and prolonged construction time. The more valuable personnel and smaller shipments of high-priority cargo used shuttles; it was only the rank-and-file who flung themselves into the abyss in order to get from point Aure to point Besh. The Palpatinopolis had thus far managed to avoid other costly disasters, such as stellar instability or extrastellar hurricanes.

However, its financial reports were disappointing, and the complex’s ability to export energy was not due to come fully online for another five standard years. (And the exports were limited to ship refueling and domestic energy use on the small network of habitable planets surrounding the star. Hardly the lofty ambitions the Emperor must have had for the complex.) Even if the complex’s problems were solved at this very moment, the author of the dossier had regretfully included a footnote that they did not anticipate the complex being finished for another standard decade at the very earliest.

To Thrawn, the obvious conclusion was that construction time would be speeded--and unnecessary loss of life and limb would be at least halved--if there were more reliable transport. However, an earlier cable-suspension transportation system had been dismantled during the Clone Wars; it was unclear at best as to why it was never re-installed, and the dossier discussing the Palpatinopolis had not seen fit to provide even a redacted explanation. Thrawn had his own suspicions, which centered on the comparative ease of sabotage--after all, one could not move a star hither and yon. It was a sitting duck for any insurgents.

The value of a stellar engine complex to the Galactic Republic--to the Empire--was enormous, especially if the engine complex had been finished and was actively supplying power to its deep space fleet, various merchant vessels, or even to colonies around the star. It was, perhaps, one of the few areas where a public works project could actually have been of use, had certain Imperial personages not gotten their hands on it. Since the star it was leeching from was large (for its category) and healthy, and its flares and windstorms were semi-predictable with the latest computer models, the Palpatinopolis’ energy output was substantial, even though construction was still incomplete. 

For now, only a comparably small fraction of the energy harvested by the complex was used for its operations and construction efforts; the data for where the rest went, as well as the precise metric for how much could be produced once finished, was well-redacted. (Krennic’s fingerprints were all over this section again, and once--in the case of a scanned document--they were included in the literal sense; he was fairly certain Krennic’s hands were drenched in either iron-rich mud or blood when he was handling the scrap of flimsi.) The wattage that was not accounted for was almost certainly not going to power the lights on the habitable planets orbiting the star. Whatever Krennic was doing, it was most likely wasting Imperial resources; the cost of beaming the harvested energy across the galaxy, as he was doing, was exorbitant. 

Thrawn, reviewing the mission parameters on his datapad as the Chimaera dropped out of hyperspace, had an inkling of where the energy might be going, and would have ground his teeth in frustration at it if he had the liberty to do so. Of course, the data was so redacted that not even he, an Imperial Grand Admiral, could access it; but the ISB clearly had never looked at Miralukan bas-reliefs, in order to see what was suggested by negative space. If one knew where to look, and how, absence could indicate evidence; the absence here all pointed back to the mysterious Project Stardust. (And Krennic’s blasted fingerprints were all over the thing, anyways. He had no more subtlety than a rampaging wampa. Who else would have so little sense as to initial comments on a redacted file? Had the ISB simply thrown up their hands (or palps) in despair at his behavior?)

He tried, with some success, to direct his mind back to the mission. There were some irregularities with the Palpatinopolis, irregularities which required him to personally determine what was occuring. Thrawn found it interesting that he was being dispatched on this mission and not Krennic; perhaps it was what Vanto had once referred to as “rubbing your nose in it.” It certainly seemed petty enough--and obvious enough--for Krennic to have accomplished, even with his limited capabilities. Perhaps he was laughing somewhere, if he had not been trapped in a revolving door by his ridiculous cape. 

Or, more likely, Thrawn was once again being asked to clean up the mess that the Empire had created through its own negligence; funny, how such missions always seemed to fall to him, the alien from Wild Space. Another lesson Vanto had pointed out early in their friendship, and one he was apparently never to avoid, unless he awoke one morning with human features. For all his achievements, the Empire seemed to enjoy giving him the scut work, as much as they could get away with without appearing to have a bias against him (lest public opinion suddenly be turned by those things; Thrawn could count the humans who worked well with him on the fingers of one hand and still have room left). 

He was almost convinced that he’d be surprised one day with orders to depart on a mapping expedition. (Or, perhaps even worse, asked to resign and siloed into a teaching position at the Academy.) No matter how unpleasant or nigh-suicidal the task, he would execute it to the best of his ability, should such an unfortunate order make its way to him; but he preferred to be working to further Imperial glory in a more direct way, such as defeating the Rebels and confiscating art from Rebel sympathizers.

This was not a fruitful line of thought, he reminded himself. What was important was the mission: why was the Palpatinopolis so behind schedule? Worker injuries and fatalities were higher than the Imperial standard, with some blaming the injuries and deaths on Rebel (or perhaps indigenous) sabotage; the non-human indigenous beings of the nearest habitable planet, Achpa, were suing the complex administrator for violating their Galactic Republic-era rights of free movement and freedom of worship (hence the theory of sabotage); the complex administrator was under observation for potentially embezzling funds; and, finally, Rebels were suspected of having built a base in the mountains of said nearby planet. 

Any one of these could be the reason why construction had slowed to an unacceptable crawl even by Imperial standards. He had not cultivated a theory of his own at this point; although there were compelling leads, he would need to see the Palpatinopolis himself before allowing himself to favor one. He would, of course, be lying if he weren’t also using the opportunity to visit the complex in order to see what Krennic had been able to use as leverage to get his stars-damned project approved. 

After this mission was done, he would return to Lothal. To what end, of course, he wasn’t sure; he supposed he would have to quash the infuriating Rebel cells in the region, and then...simply wait for Project Stardust to become public, and proceed from there as he was ordered. What little he understood of Project Stardust--what little he could glean from the reports on this engine complex and Tarkin’s unsubtle goading--indicated to him that the Rebels were not likely to be wiped out by its product. 

There were rumors floating around high command, as well. Even though high command had a distressing tendency to favor wild rumors, such as that Lord Vader was secretly a robot, that one of the Hutts had a bodyguard that was simultaneously a wampa, Force-sensitive, and wielding a lightsaber, and that it had taken out no less than six Inquisitors when they came to determine what was going on, or that Grand Moff Tarkin had once attempted to hunt Lord Vader for sport, there were those with a more substantial attachment to reality. Rumors that indicated Project Stardust was going to bring down the very Empire itself.

“Bridge to Grand Admiral Thrawn.” It was Ensign Cramirr. One of his newer recruits, and a Cathar, at that; her littermates, he’d learned, were scattered throughout the galaxy on other Imperial assignments. Most of the new recruits were near-human or nonhuman, it seemed; of the humans who signed on with the Chimaera, many hailed from the Outer Rim, from outposts in Wild Space, or otherwise were somehow...non-standard. He supposed that someone had simply decided he was the dumping ground for anyone who wouldn’t pass muster for the glossy holovids Recruitment liked to put out. 

“This is Thrawn.” He closed the datapad, watching as the Palpatinopolis loomed ever larger through the viewscreen. It wasn’t an ugly stellar engine, even though such things were necessarily not constructed with aesthetics in mind; however, he thought the stellar engines that the Ascendancy constructed were more pleasing to the eye. Certainly they were constructed in a manner less likely to risk life and limb beyond acceptable tolerances. 

The Empire had what Rebel propaganda referred to as “reckless disregard for sentient life,” or what Thrawn privately thought of as a lack of responsibility to its workers, and in cases such as this, it was difficult to refute their point. He could see a transport orb being flung from one statite to another, and determined that he, and any stormtroopers or other personnel needed, would be making all trips to and from the complex via shuttle. He did not care to add to the complex’s overly high casualty rate.

“Wow, look at it go,” Cramirr said, astounded. “Ooh, is he gonna make it?” And there was the problem of being the commanding officer of everyone the Navy had decided wouldn’t fit on its other ships; while he certainly had beings with more potential, dedication, and enthusiasm in their left smallest palp than half of Command, overall, shipboard morale, standards, and behavior were a constant work in progress. 

“I am certain you did not hail me just to draw my attention to foolish stunts,” Thrawn said. The transport orb hovered in the void for a few heartbeats and landed safely in the next statite’s docking bay. There was a muffled round of applause in the background of the commlink. Clearly discipline had gone too slack; he made a note to have Captain Pellaeon run more drills, and tougher ones at that, while he was away. “Are we quite finished gawking, Ensign?”

“Y-yes, Admiral. Your shuttle’s been cleared for transport to the engine complex.” Cramirr coughed. 

“Thank you. Please inform the Palpatinopolis that I will be arriving shortly.”

The shuttle’s pilot was Oe’Samdazo, a young Twi’lek who had a great deal of potential. They had gone unnoticed by their previous commanders, and Thrawn had been genuinely pleased to see Samdazo’s performance in flight drills increase once they were transferred to the Chimaera. Unfortunately, they also had a perpetual cold, which they attempted to treat by sucking incessantly on some bizarre remedy from their colony which resembled a boiled twig. The noise was maddening and the smell was rather unpleasant.

“Clear for launch,” Samdazo said, and then, in a concession to the honor of having an Imperial Grand Admiral on their shuttlecraft, ostentatiously spat the used-up lozenge they were sucking into a garbage receptacle before putting another one into their cheek. While the aim was impressive, it was certainly not befitting of an Imperial Navy pilot. Discipline had grown lax, indeed, while he was running fool’s errands on Lothal with Governor Pryce.

The initial part of the flight was reasonably calm, with only some turbulence. The complex filled the entire viewscreen, if looked at straight-on; only the radar provided a more accurate (and safe for viewing) path. It was part of why they had exited hyperspace just within shuttle range of the complex; perishing inside of a star after making a misguided jump to hyperspace was not high on Thrawn’s list of priorities. (He still remembered one of the older ozyly-esehembo telling the new recruits the harrowing tale of a foolish young cadet who had leapt with both feet into a nebula; he and Thrass had had nightmares for weeks.) 

The shuttle neared the engine complex while he was lost in thought, and Thrawn saw a sudden surge of heat near one of the docking rings. It would not be visible on the shuttle’s radar until it was too late. “Samdazo, shift 90 degrees hard to starboard, now,” he said. Samdazo swore violently, but complied, and the shuttle lurched violently in the shockwave as the heat surge blossomed into a fireball in the complex’s fragile false atmosphere. 

“Status report,” Thrawn said, checking the restraints on his seat. He watched as the beings on the docking ring’s flight deck milled frantically about, transport orbs and cargo shuttles diverting chaotically. Injuries and fatalities from the blast were regrettable; he did, however, have a glimpse at his opponent’s cards now. (Or so he hoped.)

“I think I broke a tooth,” Samdazo said, their face twisting slightly with pain as they gingerly prodded their cheek with their hand. “Mm, yep, definitely broke it. And swallowed it. Shields, engines, and communications are still operational, though. And we’re not currently on fire. I think.”

“The next time an officer asks you for a report, please lead with the vessel’s condition unless there are life-threatening injuries to report. I highly doubt that you will die of a cracked tooth.” The lecture was cut off when a distress signal squawked over the comm link, fortunately only from the Palpatinopolis.

“This is Thrawn,” he said, turning on the comm link. “Do you require assistance with the containment efforts on the level twenty-four docking ring?”

The explosion was severe enough, and located close enough to the docking ring’s forcefield-gate, that two more of the Chimaera’s shuttles had to be deployed to assist with fire-fighting, preventing the docking ring from decompression, and medical intervention. Once the worst of the flames had cleared, medical personnel had begun evacuating the wounded and deceased, and further transports were re-routed, they could begin investigating the incident. The docking ring had been heavily affected by the explosion; fatalities and casualties were high. 

“The blast epicenter was within three meters around the gate controls,” Utateesh Taa, one of the Palpatinopolis’ engineers, said as she tried to wipe ashes from her lekku. “I can’t determine yet the type of device used, but it seems similar to an incident three standard weeks ago in the canister depot.” She scowled.

“There were more casualties this time, too. It’s been happening too frequently. We used to have an explosion or two every month, but never anything that harmed anyone.” Taa continued, watching as her team beat back a secondary fire on one of the damaged control stations. "San Gres! Stars above, watch where you're pointing that extinguisher!"

Thrawn was still unimpressed with the Imperial attitude to workplace safety. Such frequent explosions in an energy complex, of all places, should have rang alarm bells months ago. He wondered bitterly if the Rebels were so careless with their limited resources.

“Were the explosions all in the same location at the same time?” Thrawn asked. The Rebels, he’d learned, had their little quirks--and a flair for the dramatic that would have put the most enthusiastic Coruscanti opera performer to shame. Perhaps they had been trying to lull the complex’s workers into false security with seemingly minor explosions; perhaps they were merely continuing to fail at their mission. He was never sure which he was going to run up against with each encounter.

“No," Taa said, once her subordinates had finished nearly destroying the controls to a hauling array. "They vary in intensity, in location, in time, even in the causes. They’re always just on the edge of sabotage; I’d be willing to bet that when I examine the readings on the gate sensor, there’d be a just slightly too high energy reading that comes out of nowhere.”

“The simplest explanation is that the explosions were caused by Rebel sabotage,” Thrawn said. “Unless the personnel on the docking rings have not been properly evaluated to ensure that they are in the best physical condition? Perhaps someone was asleep at their desk?”

The safety inspector, who had been hit very hard on the head with a piece of debris, was not in a condition to confirm or deny this statement. Instead, she was being evaluated for head injuries. Her deputy, a young Pantoran, stepped in. “No, Admiral,” she said, her clipped Coruscanti accent a surprise, considering the traditional tattoos ornamenting her face and hands and the veil she wore under her uniform cap. (Interesting, that an adherent to the Pantoran Suns Cult was working for the Empire; he filed this away for later.) “The last evaluation was held one standard day ago. Nobody working on this docking ring had anything more severe than a hangnail.”

“And on the others?” he asked.

“One pilot developed stellar blindness after an unexpected flare, but they’re recuperating in the hospital wing now.” She fell silent as her supervisor was carted off in a medical transport. Her lips moved silently for some moments before she picked up the thread of the conversation. “No reports of mental or physical stress, no predispositions to sudden death or collapse, nothing that we would have been able to prevent. We perform daily full inspections of all our equipment and workstations, and additional task-specific inspections at every shift change; everything was exactly within normal parameters at the last check.”

“When was the last check?”

“Two standard hours ago, when we switched over to the evening shift. We’re due for another check in a few minutes, but I think we’re going to have some delays.” She frowned at her datapad, her tattoos shifting.

“Reports can be very easily falsified, and so can records and readings. I am certain you are aware of this. And yet you do not believe me when I say that this was Rebel sabotage,” he said, gesturing at the carnage around them.

“I don’t think it was the Rebels,” she said, quietly, her face suddenly heating. “I think it was from planetside.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked. “There is no planetary limit to where the Rebels may be--you cannot be so foolish as to think that they are not on Achpa.”

She looked over her shoulders. “It’s not the Rebels I’m worried about, Admiral, it’s the Achpani,” she hissed, her gold eyes narrowed, the elongated vowels and sibilants of the Pantoran upper class emerging more clearly now. “They want us gone. They want the Rebels gone, too, but us first.”

A protocol droid suddenly buzzed over before the Pantoran could explain herself. “Admiral Thrawn, Administrator Gell apologizes profusely for the incident this afternoon, and sends his regrets that he cannot be here to personally welcome you to the complex…” Thrawn knew when he was being pushed away before someone caused an incident--he had decades of practice with that, now--and allowed the droid to maneuver him to where he was supposed to be. There wasn’t anything further that he himself could to to assist with the incident at this point.

As the station administrator was currently planetside, and a scheduled stellar flare prevented him from returning until the next morning, Thrawn was summarily escorted to the complex’s guest quarters. The administrator’s wife and family had returned to Coruscant for the start of his eldest daughter’s first year at one of the universities on-planet; the complex’s second-in-command was laid up in the hospital wing with the Delvian flu, and therefore nobody would host him for dinner. Thrawn had not been keen on a dinner party, and so did not mind this slight terribly much.

The protocol droid had informed him that dinner would be served momentarily, after its explanation of why he could not dine with the administrator; the meal was, to his dismay, precisely the same rations available on the Chimaera. While a stellar engine complex was not necessarily a hotbed of fine cooking, he had at least hoped that the rations would have been slightly different. Fortunately, Gell had thought to leave the guest quarters’ bar well stocked.

After eating and ensuring that the Chimaera’s personnel had returned to the ship, he sat in the quarters’ main room, lights dimmed almost to darkness, watching the sails flap in the stellar winds through the viewscreen as he sipped a mug of Forvish ale. Even with the awesome view before him, he was not quite able to focus on stellar power or the beauty of space storms, or even the stark, clean lines and angles of the cable nets and statites. Instead, he found himself turning over familiar territory in his mind. 

What was the true purpose of his visiting this place? Clearly this was not an invitation from Krennic to see how much better his project was; even he could not be so incompetent as to invite his competitors to see how poorly part of his weapon against their greatest enemy was being managed. Well, the Empire’s current greatest enemy, to be more exact. If they were able to quash the Rebels, he hoped for the chance to bring the Empire into alliance with the Ascendancy against the Far Outsiders. Or so he had once hoped. He took a slightly larger sip of his ale than he should have, if he were going by Forvish practice. 

With events going as they were, though, he had doubts about the Empire’s future. He knew at least part of his pessimism came from the failure of his own project; it was a simple and economical solution, so being passed over in favor of this debacle was of course disheartening. If Project Stardust had been of equal merit, he would have gladly thrown himself behind it. Tarkin had approved of it, which was perhaps what the problem was; although the Tarkin Doctrine was elegant, in its own brutalist way, it really was laying the foundation for further rebellions. He could see the doctrine’s sketchwork quite easily beneath the paint of Rebel propaganda; for all that the Empire had done to feed and clothe millions, to bring some measure of stability to the galaxy, every day there was another Rebel cell created from some new atrocity or another. 

He was reminded suddenly of how frantic the Pantoran had been when she spoke to him earlier. The Achpani had been mentioned in his dossier, but only briefly; sentient, non-human (decidedly nonhuman), and surprisingly primitive by the author’s standards, they worshiped the star that the Palpatinopolis was meant to mine. There was little else written about them, save for the references to ongoing lawsuits against the Empire, some of which had been started--he had to check the dates twice--just before the Clone Wars. Erso had been named as a plaintiff in some of them, which intrigued him. 

Their culture, of course, was glossed over entirely, save for some intriguing ideas about their leader’s descent from said star, and the necessity of their making pilgrimages once every standard year to offer it sacrifices. While the dossier concluded that indigenous sabotage was a potential cause of the problems with the Palpatinopolis, in addition to all its other woes, the greater focus had been on the Rebels and the rumors of their establishing a base on Achpa. 

He would focus on the complex and its goings-on when he met with the administrator the next day, but Thrawn decided that he ought to take a careful look at the Achpani--after thoroughly investigating Engineer Taa, the Pantoran deputy inspector (if her superior was still in the bacta tank), and various other complex personnel, of course. He swirled the dregs of the Forvish ale in his mug and drank it down, the sails on the nearest cable suddenly buffeted by a flare. 

The author (and countless Imperial personnel) had neglected to see an obvious side effect of the Achpani’s continued and unaddressed grievances--weakened (if any) loyalty to the Empire. If his suspicions were correct, they had an entire habitable planet on the verge of defecting to the Rebels, whether they had established a base on the planet or not--and woe betide the Palpatinopolis when that happened.


	2. A Meeting With Station Officials

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn has several enlightening conversations with several of the Palpatinopolis' officials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, we have quite a bit more violence in this chapter: Imperial officials discuss (and threaten to commit) genocide; implied torture by the Emperor as a punishment; two Imperial officials have a physical altercation (no punching or kicking, but some mild choking/dangling by one's collar); one Imperial official considers threatens another official's family.
> 
> We also have the usual speciesism from Imperial officials.

The next morning dawned, and Administrator Ryleran Gorminicus Gell IV, of the Coruscanti Gells, was not to be found in his office; instead, he was in a hologram projection room, shooting skeet. It was a very advanced projection room; the colors and clarity almost rivaled that of the Ascendancy’s projectors. It would have been terribly expensive--Thrawn had looked at several such projectors recently for his personal quarters on Coruscant--and almost out of reach for what a complex administrator could reasonably afford. (He could have afforded it, of course, but he spent so little time on Coruscant that he determined the expense would be unreasonable.)

While this certainly lent credence to the embezzlement theory, Thrawn said nothing about the room as he was ushered in. He had found that among susceptible persons, the mere presence of a high-ranking, inquisitive Imperial Navy officer made them more likely to confess to any wrongdoings in a panic. (Especially one who looked as alien as he did, to most Imperials. One instance where the biases of certain humans worked in his advantage.) Gell, unfortunately, was not one of those people.

“Admiral. Do you shoot?” Gell was flirting with rudeness in how brusquely he addressed him; Thrawn, who was used to this sort of behavior from certain Imperial humans, kept his face clear of even the mildest raised eyebrow.

“Not as often as I would like to,” Thrawn said. 

“You can have a turn after me, then,” Gell said. "Pull!” Startlingly realistic jewel-birds fluttered across the simulated sky, their cries echoing vividly in the otherwise empty room. 

"How did you correct the hologram colors?" Thrawn asked as he watched the administrator shoot (and miss more than he should have, he noted; somehow, Imperial marksmanship was always poor to disastrously bad). "It is very accurate; I can even see their heat signatures."

"Damn, I missed one. Oh, there's a crystal planetside that corrects the color imbalance, but the birds are real." Gell waved his blaster hand rather carelessly. Thrawn stepped backwards. Another thing he had learned about the Empire, and which both worried him and frustrated him immensely, was their far too casual approach to live weapons. Not even the worst-performing cadet in the Expeditionary Force would have had the foolishness to gesture wildly with a loaded weapon in their hand. 

"I should like to use that crystal for my holographic art collection. The blue cast is...not always appreciated." Thrawn studiously ignored the birds; although it was more than a little unsporting to use them as target practice, he knew addressing the subject with Gell would only deepen the human’s unearned resentment of him.

“They didn’t send a Grand Admiral to discuss holograms, did they? I suppose you’re here about the fleabags.”

“The fleabags?” Thrawn weighed his words carefully, balancing the tone as carefully as a gymnast on a wire. Too foreboding, and Gell would sense his intentions; too interested, and Gell would dismiss him as a barely-literate freak from Wild Space, not a look he was terribly interested in cultivating. “I am not sure what you mean by that.”

“Oh, right, they wouldn’t have put that in the dossier. Milquetoasts, the lot of them. I meant the primitives down planetside.” Thrawn was struck suddenly by how insufferable Grand Moff Tarkin must have been when he was younger and more energetic; Gell was no Tarkin, would never approach Tarkin’s level, but he certainly shared his distaste for non-humans.

“They were mentioned, yes.” He leaned in as Gell reloaded his blaster. “I was more concerned about the explosion yesterday, and its predecessors. The Emperor is most displeased with the lack of progress on his station.”

Gell seemed unconcerned by the Emperor’s disapproval; Thrawn wondered if it would take a direct threat to the administrator’s bank account (or perhaps his family) for him to find any kind of incentive to work with him. “Well, I certainly wasn’t doing it. I was stuck down there talking to Grandma Fleabag about her rheumatism.”

“By ’Grandma Fleabag,’ you mean whom, exactly? Unless you happen to have an Achpani grandmother?” Thrawn despised imprecision and carelessness, something Gell (and far too many of the Empire’s officials) seemed to revel in.

Gell snarled and snapped the loading mechanism shut roughly. “Don’t be a deviant. I’m fully human, unlike some people. I meant their leader, their chief. She’s about two hundred and will talk your ear off about her grandchildren and her rheumatism and young people these days if you don’t cut her off at the pass.”

“You should refer to her with more respect.” Thrawn did not address the implied insult to himself, although he did find himself furrowing his brow more than he should. “Even if she is non-human, she is still a sovereign, and an elder, and at the very least deserves to be addressed by her title and not some demeaning and unclever name. You are the administrator of an Imperial stellar engine complex, and presumably a grown man; act like it. Fortunately for you, we have larger concerns than your manners, Administrator.”

“What concerns are there? I’ll tell you and High Command and whoever else has to hear it whatever you like as long as you get the Department of Redesign to take care of the fleabags. Or most of them, anyways. I have...a vested interest, shall we say, in keeping some of them alive. Perhaps the children, they’re a bit more docile.” 

The mention of the IDR stopped Thrawn in his tracks, even though the rest of Gell’s statement was, frankly, deeply concerning. Gell was not supposed to know about the IDR, or at least have the good sense to not admit to knowing of it in front of an Imperial official; to mention it as a solution to a yet-unidentified problem was incredibly troubling. “You cannot be serious.”

“What?” Gell said.

“You are telling me that you will lie to me in order for me to put in an order to commit genocide.”

“So? It’ll solve the problem, won’t it? Cut the prim-and-proper act and look at it rationally.” Gell handed him the blaster in a stunning display of carelessness. Thrawn took the weapon and put it down on a display stand, facing away with the safeties on, before leaning in and grabbing Gell by the collar. It took comparatively little effort to hoist the human up until he was eye-level.

“Oh, I am looking at it rationally. You are asking me to falsify a report to the Emperor. Do you know what the penalty for that is, Administrator? Do you think his imperial majesty will stop at punishing me? The whole station would suffer, the entire House of Gell would be eradicated root and branch. Are you willing to take that risk?”

Gell stared at him, wide-eyed, his feet kicking the air. His mouth moved, but no sound came out, just a gulping noise that was barely audible over the frantic cries of the jewel-birds. All the blood had drained from his face, and all the heat, too. Good; he’d finally knocked the pompous, blustering ass off his balance.

“You are asking me to lie in order to use Imperial resources, to waste Imperial resources, and attack a civilian population. A civilian population who, while irritating, have not yet been proven to cause the complex any harm. A civilian population that the Rebels could use as a propaganda piece against us.” Thrawn tightened his grasp, cutting off just enough air to make Gell cough and wheeze. “You are asking me to aid and abet the Rebels, Administrator. I should report you immediately.”

“I--no--”

Thrawn let him go and picked a piece of lint off of his sleeve cuff, watching coolly as Gell gasped for air on the floor, sprawled before him like some sort of ugly lungfish. “Of course, you would never do such a thing. What a baseless accusation I have made. You are a loyal subject and a good citizen of the Empire; you know better than to behave in such a manner.” 

Gell nodded, all the bravado drained out of him for the moment; still, hate and fear sparked in his eyes. It was almost too easy to manipulate him; hopefully he had thrown the human enough to provoke him into revealing some vital information, or at least to stay out of the way of his investigation. “Y-yes, of course.”

“Collect yourself. I will be speaking to Engineer Taa and other beings who were on the scene of the explosion yesterday; when I have finished with them, I will be returning to discuss my findings with you. I should hope your attitude towards my investigations would have improved somewhat by then.” Thrawn smiled, baring all his teeth, as he took up the blaster; he felt no small amount of pleasure at how Gell flinched. “Now, I believe you said it is my turn?”

When he shot, he did not miss any targets; he watched the jewel-birds flutter to the floor as Gell’s face slowly gained back its color. Thrawn felt the administrator’s eyes boring a hole into his back as he departed the room without saying a word. While the impulse was petty, and the death of the jewel-birds was a slight sting to his conscience, he found himself regretting it not one iota.

Thrawn returned to his quarters and slowly drank a large glass of water while he determined his new course of action. The conversation with Gell had gone poorly by any standard; the only thing he had learned from it was that he needed to restrain the Administrator from causing a debacle that he couldn't fix. The Administrator had also spoken of the IDR as if ordering a genocide was as inconsequential as ordering one’s morning caf with extra cream. (The thought came to him that perhaps he had been asked to rid the Empire of this meddling fool; if so, why bother to send him? An assassin would have been more sensible and cost-effective.)

Thrawn was, of course, clear-eyed about the necessity of genocide on some occasions (necessary, if regrettable, and certainly not a decision to make lightly or without the input of others), but Gell’s attitude surprised and deeply unsettled him. If there were a Rebel presence planetside, it could entirely be caused by Gell’s previous actions on other stations--matters which had not been included (for some reason) in the dossier. Thrawn therefore needed to delve deeper.

While he himself could not do so without raising suspicions, he was clever enough to have trusted beings who could. He had cultivated a friendship with one of the Imperial Archivists, Asun Engari; she had gone above and beyond to assist him with certain record inquiries, and continued to do so even now. Thrawn had not needed to work too hard to ensure her loyalty; the archivist had started her career on the Chimaera some years ago, and he had been the one to push her into the Imperial Archives instead of letting her talents languish in the Navy. 

The commlink to the Imperial Archives opened with only slight distortion; he supposed the need to send legible communications from the complex had prompted some advances in transmission technology. Not quite in line with Ascendancy commlinks, but a good effort for the Empire. “Admiral! How can I assist you today?”

“Archivist Engari, I have two requests for you.” She nodded, pulling a datapad and stylus off of her desk, and then looked at him expectantly. Asun was clearly enjoying the fact that he had personally called her for assistance; it would be so easy to mold her as he wished. But he had more important concerns at the moment.

“What’s the first request?”

“I need for you to send me Administrator Gell’s records from all the complexes and depots he has served with since he began his career.”

“That’s a little too easy, Admiral,” she said. The transfer to the Imperial Archives had boosted her confidence immensely, as he knew it would; quite a change from the shy ensign who had been so anxious that she nearly fainted when he made a request in-person. “You could have done that yourself!”

“Think of it as a reward for the second request.” Asun made a few notes on her datapad and looked up, interested; she had never quite learned to school her face even in the limited ways that humans did. He leaned in conspiratorially, noticing how her face flushed even through the blue haze of the hologram; she clutched the datapad a little too tightly as she waited for him to speak. “I want to find out if a certain biological sample is in the Imperial cloning facility, and--if possible--what has happened to it.”

Asun sucked her teeth. "That--uh--the cloning facility--that’s going to be a bit hard." But not a refusal; he knew she would do as he asked without question, even after leaving the Navy. Not that there had ever been any doubt.

"I will provide you with the base pairs to look for."

"Well. Base pairs. That certainly, uh, helps," she said. "Of course, I will need permission to enter that facility's data storage...and the encryption level...and the approximate date range for when the samples were submitted...oh, and if you have at least one potential submitter..."

Her stylus scratched frantically as she thought out loud.

"Of course. Expect the access codes--and the data--momentarily."

"Thank you," she said, swallowing hard. One final note on her datapad, her stylus stabbing the surface slightly more roughly than it should have. "Is there anything else I can assist you with?"

"No," he said, thoughtfully. "That is...more than enough for you, I think."

"May the Force be with you, Admiral," Asun said, an Outer Rim habit she had never quite managed to lose. He found it amusing, sometimes.

"And with you," he said, and closed the link. Hopefully he wouldn't have to disavow her; he liked having her assistance. Checking the time, he finished his glass of water and settled back in his chair to meditate. The conversations with Taa and the other staff members were yet to come; he had only some confidence that these meetings would be more informative. Best to approach them with a clear head.

He emerged from meditation and, escorted by Administrator Gell, began his interviews with the beings who were present at the blast the previous day. Engineer Taa was much more well-prepared than Gell was for her meeting with Thrawn (although a dinoflagellate with a head cold would have been more prepared than Gell); she provided him with a datapad full of reports as soon as he sat down in the conference room. Gell harrumphed and left; Thrawn was thankful that he only had to manage one being. 

“I took the liberty of examining and collecting all the reports made before each explosion,” she said. “As I said to you yesterday, Admiral, there was a very slight increase in key readings before each event. The increases were just within normal range. Only one, the first one, was close enough to trigger a second look. That one was right at shift change, so we had double the casualties compared to the others.”

“Hmm.” He looked at the graph she had created, tilting the datapad to and fro. “It would not surprise me if the blast was targeted for precisely that reason; it is strange that the other blasts did not follow a similar pattern. Were you able to determine the causes of each blast?” It occurred to him that the station might be experiencing attacks from multiple, uncoordinated groups; while it amused him to think of the Rebels sabotaging themselves, it would create additional headaches when he put them down.

“Unexplained, unexpected equipment failure to withstand power surges.” She shook her head, her lekku swinging slightly. “There wasn’t even a power surge--at least, not a surge as you or I would categorize it. Just a sudden blip in power, localized in just the right areas at just the right times. I doubt the lights even flickered anywhere else--at least, not until things began exploding.”

“And you have not been able to find any reason why the equipment is failing in such a manner?”

“All the components are at standard, or were before they were destroyed,” she said. “We can’t find any specific flaw that would lend itself to these explosions. The only thing I can think of is stellar pulses, but the Achpani workers on the station said they didn’t notice anything around the times of each event.”

This piqued his interest; it would also explain how the Achpani were considered suspects in the sabotage when the dossier had indicated they very rarely left their planet or interacted with off-worlders. “What do you mean by that?”

“The Achpani--I’m sorry, this is a little unscientific--the Achpani can feel the fluctuations in the star’s energy,” Taa said. “It’s a universal trait amongst the species--those of us on-station who are more sensitive to magnetic fields can feel them, too, but not as strongly as they do. If they say a flare’s coming at three in the afternoon standard, it comes at three in the afternoon standard.”

“People lie, Engineer.”

“They don’t. At least, they don’t lie about this. They worship the star, after all--they think she’s talking to them when she flares.”

“What an interesting belief,” he said. “I imagine this is a part of why they are displeased with the complex’s construction.”

“We have been told it won’t substantially reduce sunlight levels on-planet,” Taa said, sounding unconvinced. “But we were also told to make a solid shield array.”

“Which would indeed reduce sunlight levels.” Thrawn looked down at the datapad; just when he thought that he had one lead, another reared up to take its place. “Have you tested their reactions to solar flares, or is this merely reported and believed without question?”

“We’re in the process of testing it,” she replied. “Gell doesn’t like us poking at his pets very much.”

“Pets? I thought that the Achpani were sentient.” Gell’s earlier statement became even more distasteful; clearly he would need to be reined in sharply. His lip curled in disgust, and Taa hastily moved to correct herself.

“They are sentient, Admiral. Gell doesn’t treat them like pet pets, more like...favored lab rats. He has some kind of money-making scheme, I think, with their biology, and limits our access to them accordingly. Which makes it difficult when we have unexpected solar flares--we have the capability of a second, fail-safe early warning system. He could get us all killed, but whatever he has going on with the Achpani is more important to him than avoiding fatal rad doses.”

He frowned. “Gell does not appear to have the interests of the complex as a priority.”

“No. He cut the budget for repairs, he asks for twelve impossible things per day…” The rest of her interview proceeded in this vein; Thrawn left her office having decided that Gell would be sacked, no matter what the outcome of the investigation.

There was a break for lunch (more unappetizing rations consumed in the guest quarters; he was trying to avoid Gell as much as he could, in order to let the human better contemplate his statements), and Thrawn resumed his questioning. His next item was to speak to the safety inspector. Unfortunately, the chief safety inspector was still languishing in the bacta tank; she had been injured more severely than expected, and they were still working to stabilize her internal bleeding from other injuries. Thrawn hoped that she did not have the key to the mystery locked away somewhere as she bobbed limply in the tank, but if she did, he could do very little about it. Instead, he spoke to her junior officer.

The new (or at least acting) safety inspector, Officer Ka’Aery Prellandera, was the same Pantoran from yesterday. He took a closer look at her facial tattoos--they were real gold, not merely gold-colored pigment, as was more common among Pantorans of all stripes, and the designs were appropriate for a high-ranking clan’s youngest daughter; he once again wondered what she was doing here--and she immediately gave him a knowing look. 

"Suns shine brightly on you, Admiral. I’m of Clan Ka’Aery. What clan are you?" she asked in heavily Basic-accented Pantora as soon as Gell stepped outside. There was a question he hadn’t been asked in years. The greeting, of course, he also had not heard in some time since he had worked to defang the Suns Cult (another instance of scut work which he preferred not to think about, although that time in service of the Ascendancy and not the Empire). There were a few Pantoran colonists and emigres whose dialect still used the phrase, but they learned quickly not to use such “Wild Space” language upon arriving to Coruscant. (Vanto had mentioned there was a similar process for humans; Thrawn remembered fondly their discussion of the term ‘krait spit.’)

“Suns shine brightly on you as well, Officer. I am of Clan Mitth,” he responded in Pantora. If he closed his eyes and ignored the background noise, the ozone-heavy smell of the recycled air, and the too-light gravity, he could almost pretend he was in Csapla again. The language was very close to Cheunh, and the Pantorans strikingly similar physically and socially to the Chiss. Although Pantorans were merely distant cousins to their species, and their societies’ best xenoarchaeologists could not determine which culture had sprung forth first despite centuries of combined efforts, it still stung him when he was assumed a Pantoran.

“Mitth...I haven’t heard of that one,” she said, confused. Her tattoos knitted together in an amusing fashion when she frowned. “Colonial or homeworld?”

“I am neither a Pantoran nor a colonial,” Thrawn replied, taking a small amount of pleasure in the way she winced. “And we really should speak Basic while we are on an Imperial ship. You know how the humans get.”

“That’s a shame,” she said, switching to Basic. “Your Pantora is better than mine.” 

“I suppose you don’t get much practice here,” he said. “Now, what can you tell me about the incidents of sabotage?” 

“We are unable to find a perpetrator for yesterday’s events, or for any of the events,” she said. “There’s only so much space they could hide on, and each transport to planetside is so carefully monitored that nobody could sneak a stowaway aboard. The medics and engineers make us go over each one with a fine-toothed comb, in order to calculate maximum rad exposure and safety tolerances. Biometric samples, weight measurements, everything.” 

“Even materials shipments?” 

“Especially materials shipments. Our insurance does not cover damage due to solar flares, and we have to scan the shipments--both manually and with every scanning device we can spare--in order to ensure we aren’t inadvertently carrying explosives or other items that don’t agree with extra rads.” Officer Ka’Aery sighed. “Of course, this doesn’t preclude sabotage on the inside.” 

“Do you have suspects?” 

“Too many and too few, all at the same time,” she said, and projected three datasheets on the far wall. “We have the usual disgruntled employees, Achpani activists, and various Rebel factions in the area. Of course, we aren’t taking into account worker carelessness, cost-cutting measures gone wrong--” 

“I suppose you are not in favor of Administrator Gell’s attempts to save the Empire money.” 

"More like line his own pocket with the savings,” Ka’Aery snapped, before stopping. “Apologies, Admiral." 

“It certainly lines up with one reading of the situation,” Thrawn said. “Do not apologize.” He stepped closer to the wall to examine the datasheets. 

“You mentioned yesterday that you felt that the Achpani were behind the blasts. Have you dealt with their activists before?” 

“They usually do sit-ins,” she said. “We have the occasional individual who gets too interested in Saw Gerrera on the holonet and tries to copy him, but for the most part, it’s just chanting.” 

“I have heard that the Achpani have extrasensory abilities. Whether or not their abilities are real, do you suppose they could be manipulating the energy levels in order to cause these blasts?” 

“You were speaking to Taa, weren’t you?” she said. “Taa’s an excellent engineer, but she’s so credulous. The Achpani can perceive energy fields, but not manipulate them to the extent that they could cause a blast. It would be like sneezing at a ceiling fan in order to make it turn.” 

An amusing, if disgusting, image; however, Ka’Aery needed to have her assumptions about relative strength corrected. “Have you been to the Pantoran Skyfangs, Officer?” 

“When I was little, for my grandmother’s suns-return ceremony,” she said. “Why?” 

“A most auspicious occasion. I am sure you are aware of the high casualties in the area from avalanches. It was before your time, of course, but there was a campaign there against the Rebels during the early Imperial period. During that campaign, there was a certain engagement in the Koom Valley..." 

She winced. “I’ve been told.” Her family was more than likely on the Rebel side in that little skirmish; most of the higher-class Pantorans (indeed, higher-class members of most planets) had elected to play both sides of the field during the chaos following the Clone Wars. A reasonable action, if something that the Empire later punished heavily. 

"Then I shall spare you the story. The Imperial forces won without having to fire a shot, and all because one of the Rebels had a cough,” Thrawn said. “A cough that brought down three metric tons of snow upon their heads. Do not think that just because the Achpani cannot make the stars dance in the sky, they are not dangerous.” 

The meeting ended shortly after that. Thrawn made his way to Administrator Gell’s office, where Gell was sitting at his desk and staring into space. 

“I would like to tour the complex tomorrow,” Thrawn said. “No pomp and circumstance, please, and no advance warning to your workers.” 

“Fine,” Gell said. 

“I should also like to see the Achpani workers, and, if possible, take a transport down to the planet.” 

“What do you want to do that for? It’s just a bunch of primitives and rock structures and camelids that spit on you,” Gell said. 

“I find it important to examine all the possible causes of a problem,” Thrawn said, “and the Achpani have come up numerous times in my interviews. It would be remiss of me to ignore their potential.” 

“I suppose,” Gell said. “Did you get anything useful?” 

“All information is useful, provided it is placed in an appropriate context.” Thrawn raised an eyebrow. “I suppose I do not need to tell you that your workers are displeased with your management of the complex. I certainly have some questions about how things are being done here.” 

“Of course you do,” Gell replied in a tone barely above a growl. “What else have you heard?” 

“I cannot share my other findings with you, as you are a possible suspect.” 

“Possible suspect!?” Gell’s face was so heated, his body language so tense, that Thrawn momentarily thought that the human was on the verge of collapse. “How dare you--” 

“It is a matter of procedure, Administrator. Do not raise your voice at me again. I would like you to think very carefully about what I said to you this morning,” Thrawn said, his voice just loud enough to carry across the desk. 

Gell’s face turned an even more unflattering shade of puce, his temperature rising steadily. “I’ll do as I please on my station!” His voice, though, lowered a few decibels as his hand crept up to his still-rumpled collar. 

“That may be so, but do tread carefully,” Thrawn said as he left the room. “I think High Command will be displeased to hear of you questioning the actions of an Admiral while you are being investigated...almost as much as your 'solution' would. I will speak with you again once I return from the planet.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would once again like to thank westiec for generously beta-reading this chapter! You are the best!
> 
> Also, if ceiling fans are not a thing in Star Wars, they should be; can you imagine how unbearable it would be on Dagobah or Tatooine (or Naboo on humid days) without one?
> 
> As always, please feel free to comment!


	3. Touring the Station

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn tours the station and takes a shuttle planetside. The planet's mysterious indigenous beings are finally revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: canon-typical speciesism; references to kidnapping and enslavement of sentients with special powers; the Empire's use of disease as a weapon; the Inquisitors are mentioned, with their little bag of tricks; you know, the usual.

Thrawn made a stop at the medical wing two hours prior to the tour, and received some unpleasant news. The safety inspector's condition had worsened during the night, and she needed to be evacuated to a more advanced medical center. While he had not expected the inspector to be up and running laps so shortly after her injuries, he had hoped that she would at least have been out of the bacta tank and in a less critical condition. The chief medic, a Gungan, was not confident about the inspector's prognosis.

"I don't think she will survive the journey," the medic said, pushing her heavily tattooed ear-flap back over her shoulder. "The bacta keeps her stabilized, but only just, and it's a long way to Greman Four. We’re on a bare-bones medical staff as it is; I can’t send anyone to accompany her during the transport. So if she runs into a problem that the transport crew can’t handle..."

She had not asked about the medical facilities on the Chimaera, and Thrawn decided not to bring them up. "Greman Four? There is no suitable medical facility planetside?" He recalled a hospital being on Achpa; at least, the Jedi Skywalker had mentioned a facility there at one point while they served together. 

"It's...beg your pardon, Admiral, but it's frontier medicine ever since the Republic blew up the hospital planetside in the Clone Wars. Inspector Brann needs a trauma specialist, and a specialized intensive care ward, and more blood transfusions and synthetic organs than we can handle here. Take it up with the Imperial Medical Corps if you wish to complain; I'm sure her wife and son will." She sighed. "I have petitioned for the hospital to reopen since I started working here ten years ago. Nobody seems to listen.”

Thrawn watched as Brann was loaded onto the medical transport, then went to visit Gell's second-in-command. Camlou Bidhuba was still not fully recovered from his illness; the medic, who was assisting with Brann’s transport and then had to provide information for the medics at Greman Four, had not been able to give Thrawn any information on his prognosis. Instead, an orderly informed him that Bidhuba was able to talk for some time, although he tired easily. Of course, as the Delvian Flu was highly contagious, he was in strict isolation--and in total darkness, since one of the more famous symptoms was extreme photosensitivity. Had he not had better night vision than most humanoids, this would have been a somewhat difficult interview.

The protocols for even sitting on the other side of the isolation glass were strict; Thrawn supposed they had to be, as any contagious disease could easily become an epidemic on such a closed environment as the complex was. He was to sit two meters away from the glass, remain in his seat at all times, and undergo a full bacta-and-laser decontamination at the termination of the interview. A medical droid--one of the ones specifically programmed for restraining patients--was present, in case Thrawn took leave of his senses and decided to rush the barrier. 

"Turn off those LEDs, please," Bidhuba said hoarsely, before erupting into a fit of coughing. “They burn.”

"Those are my eyes, so I would prefer to keep them 'on,' as it were," Thrawn answered. "I did not think you would be affected by their glow; my apologies." He removed a pair of glasses from his pocket and donned them. The glasses were the same type he had worn to meet Governor Pryce those many years ago, if more suited for the field; there were times, even when not meeting in secret, that his eyeshine needed to be dimmed or hidden. 

"Is that better?"

"Thank you. Yes." Bidhuba wheezed as he laid back against the pillows; Thrawn was grateful that his glasses merely filtered the light output and did not interrupt his vision. Not that there was anything particularly interesting about the isolation ward; Bidhuba was not a pretty sight, either. The human's eyes were a horror, the veins surrounding them swollen and the sclera totally bloodshot; his face was drawn with pain, and even with his dark skin, he had visible bruising along his arms from the intravenous medications. (Intravenous medications! This really was frontier medicine!)

"I suppose you have not heard about the incident on the docking ring?"

"I felt it, unless I'm hallucinating shockwaves now," Bidhuba said. "And one of the orderlies told me Hananha--Inspector Brann--was in the bacta tank." Clearly Bidhuba was the administrator who actually ran things; it was a dreadfully common phenomenon in the Empire, at least when the junior partner wasn’t attempting to denounce their senior in the hopes of a promotion.

"Do you have any information on the explosions? Any leads, any suspects, any theories?"

"No." This was followed by another coughing fit. "Excuse me. I guess I shouldn't have skipped my flu hypo."

"How did you manage to contract the Delvian Flu?" Thrawn asked. "Delvia Prime is not the tourist destination it used to be." He had his suspicions, of course; the Delvian Flu was in trials as a biological weapon against the Rebels, but so far the disease had not made its debut. Not that one of the scientists couldn’t have been a bit too excited about their new toy, but rules, such as they were in that department, were much stricter now; they had had such trouble cleaning up that disgusting brain-consumption virus a few years ago.

“I don’t know. I went home on shore leave for a week, and came back with the sniffles...and now I’m here. At least my family’s all right.”

Thrawn highly doubted that this was the case, but saw no need to distress a seriously ill man further than necessary. “And where is ‘home’ for you?”

“Dantooine. And we don’t have any Delvians there, before you say anything.” The coughing began anew, and Thrawn watched in disgust as the human reached for a spit bucket. He averted his eyes, suddenly deeply thankful for all the contagion precautions.

They had learned of a potential Rebel hideout on Dantooine through certain channels; perhaps his earlier suspicions were correct. If so, he would need to have a word with Yularen. The other option--perhaps a Rebel faction (or some other third party) had deliberately infected the human. If so, why him, and not Gell? It seemed a rather risky option for a wormy fruit, with no real victory aside from making one person miserable (and possibly deathly ill) for a time. Unless they were hoping the virus had a longer latency period than previously understood, or had badly miscalculated the infection window.

The rest of the interview had to be cut short, as the coughing fit could not be stemmed and was growing more violent by the moment; the isolation nurse droid had gone in to administer an emergency dose of cough suppressant, and Thrawn decided it was best to undergo the decontamination now than to potentially run late for the tour.

The decontamination was twice as disgusting as being submerged in a bacta tank; in a bacta tank, they at least sedated you so you weren’t aware of how the fluid surrounded you. The lasers simply baked everything that the bacta tank left on you, resulting in a smell similar to the Ascendancy’s emergency bac-rations. Oh, how he hated those bac-rations; the whole Ascendancy had endless jokes about the desperate lengths the Outbound Flight and Expeditionary Forces would go to to avoid eating them. Nobody he knew would appreciate them now--except, possibly, for Eli.

He left the medical wing in a sour mood, returning to the guest quarters to use the refresher. One of his more important witnesses was most likely dead; he would now have to rely on Ka'Aery. And he had a suspicion about the young Pantoran he couldn't quite place--her tattoos were really more appropriate for an anchorite than a security officer. He applied his hair oil with slightly more violence than was necessary, wondering what information he had lost with Brann’s incapacitation. 

Gell and the protocol droid were waiting at the guest quarters. “Took you long enough,” Gell said.

“I was visiting your colleague in the isolation ward,” Thrawn said. Gell turned pale, the ghastly sort of whitish color that light-skinned humans went. Perhaps the administrator had deliberately infected his colleague--but to what end? The other administrator had been no real concern of Thrawn’s. Even the deliberately vague file on him in the mission dossier had eliminated him as a suspect, or even a potential source of problems; one of the millions of beings in the Empire who simply did as they were told and lived their whole lives in grey-suited anonymity. 

“Isolation! Did you...learn anything?” Gell spluttered.

Thrawn could not resist the temptation, juvenile as it was, and allowed the silence to stretch out like a Loth-cat in the sun. “I was told I should not be contagious,” he said once the blood had totally drained from Gell’s face, and did not bother to hide his contemptuous smirk.

The tour proceeded as Imperial officials' visits usually did--a bevy of flustered supervisors, three Rebel attempts to sabotage the complex being snuffed out, and seven workers locking their knees and fainting as he walked by. Gell glowered through each stop, his eyebrows furrowing deeper and deeper by the moment. Perhaps his little joke had been too much for the human. The protocol droid who accompanied them seemed oblivious to the administrator's temper, even for a droid type not known for its awareness, and chattered inanely the whole while.

The fainting, at least, was amusing; the Rebel plots were barely half-formed, so no real satisfaction could be found in their destruction (although one suspected Rebel who escaped looked distractingly like Kallus; he hoped that there weren't--stars forbid--more like him roaming the galaxy with their odd little sideburns and affinity for being thrown through plate glass windows). Gell had avoided the medical wing; just as well, as Thrawn had noticed that Bidhuba’s ribcage was about to crack from the muscle strain of coughing, and the medics were probably very busy putting him back together. Ultimately, though, he was focused on the tour of the Achpani workers’ stations, barely registering the other sights in his desire to see what was going on with the administrator’s secret project. Gell had delayed this for as long as possible, perhaps hoping to build up anticipation, perhaps delaying in order to hide evidence of wrongdoings. 

Finally, though, Gell could delay no longer. The Achpani (or the Wa’Runa, as they called themselves, per the protocol droid’s near-ceaseless bleating) barely met the Imperial definitions for humanoids; they resembled greatly one of the planet’s native camelid species, differing only in that they were bipedal and were comparable to humans in intelligence. Like Wookies, they were covered in dense hair, and were not physically capable of speaking Basic. It was, perhaps, a few quirks of biology that saved them from meeting the Wookies’ fate. 

They were incredibly sensitive to stellar flares and fluctuations in the star’s magnetic fields; this, combined with the species’ Pre-Em use of translator droids for trading purposes, had made them useful for safety purposes. (Or they had been useful on the station, prior to Gell’s arrival; he had heard of a few Wa’Runa being used aboard smuggling vessels--with varying levels of willingness--to serve as a living early warning system. Not something that Car'das would approve of.) Their gift at weaving--surprising, considering the less than dextrous appendages they sported instead of hands--had also provided quite useful in the creation of solar nets. The complex, of course, had several weaving rooms for solar nets and solar net components, as well as a (dusty and disused) visual deck where the Wa’Runa could provide warning for stellar flares and other adverse events. 

The administrator showed him one such weaving room. Several Wa’Runa individuals were working there, some preparing fiber, some spinning from ancient drop spindles, and some weaving. One was reading aloud as the others worked--they were partially through a sensational novel that was wildly popular on Coruscant, although all manner of datapads were scattered at their feet, including several newspapers. (Including a Rebel newsletter, he noted with some amazement. That took a certain level of daring, openly reading such things aloud on an Imperial outpost.) All ages and genders were represented--even, in what must be an apprenticeship or training program of sorts, young children spinning thread and assisting with warping. Infants were wrapped up in shawls and carried on their parents’ backs; the elderly were sorting thread into baskets and distributing fiber. 

The Wa’Runa used a peculiar backstrap loom configuration, most likely equally as ancient as the spindles they used. He had seen such looms on Yavin Four, in the highlands; there, the fabric created was richly colored and densely patterned, suitable for the inhabitants to use as protection against the cool nights. The nets being woven were barely perceptible, so finely were they made, but the quality was no less. The soft thrum of the shuttles as they skipped across warp and weft was a welcome break from the omnipresent drone of the complex’s engines, even if it was marred by the lurid novel being read.

“We couldn’t get them to adapt to a more modern technique,” Gell said without even bothering to lower his voice. “They make excellent work, though. You should see the textiles they have for sale in their markets. My wife had me buy all our winter bedding from them last year--we never had to raise the thermostat at all. She’s thinking of petitioning for an Imperial charter for a weaving co-op.” (Clearly Gell had not informed his wife of his intentions to slaughter her weavers; or perhaps Mrs. Gell was clever and had manipulated her oaf of a husband so that her workshop would have no competition. A level of cunning almost rivaling that of a Syndic.)

“I’m sure that would be a welcome event for them. May I see the thread you’re spinning?” Thrawn asked one of the younger individuals, who was looking at him curiously, still drafting her fiber without even looking at her forelimbs. 

The young Wa’Runa looked at Gell, who nodded, and handed Thrawn the cop of thread. Thrawn ran some through his fingers, impressed by the fineness and hand. And this was for industrial use! In the Ascendancy, it would have been suitable yarn for a merit-adoption robe. Thrass, who was always more interested in clothing and their signifiers (an important concern on Csilla, where clothes displayed one’s allegiances more artfully than the humans could ever imagine) than he was, would have been absolutely fascinated with the material. 

“I suppose the material is classified,” he said to Gell, then turned back to the spinner. “How old are you?” 

“Eight cycles,” the spinner said, the translator droid providing a strange synthesized child’s voice that contrasted jarringly against her own bleating voice. “Three and a half suns-festivals.”

“You spin very well for a child your age. Your service to the Empire is noted.” 

She smiled, showing a gap in her front teeth, and took the thread back quickly, attaching it to the spindle once more. Her hand still remained outstretched once that was completed. Thrawn sighed and pulled a sweet out of his belt pocket--a habit he’d never quite stopped after leaving the Ascendancy; it was always useful to nudge the ozyly-esehembos towards loyalty to the House of Mitth by occasionally bribing them with candy.

“Do you have children?” Gell asked as the child scampered away to a ledge, where the other children were competing to see who could spin the longest thread without dropping their spindles.

“No, I do not. The fiber has an excellent hand--are you sure you cannot tell me what it is made of?” 

“The material’s not confidential, or at least it won’t be in a few standard weeks,” Gell said as they left the room. “It’s their hair.”

“You are weaving solar sails out of their hair?” Thrawn said. He did not imagine that this was a terribly hygienic practice, no matter how clean the Wa’Runa were.

“Well, their hair, the native camelids’ hair, and some photovoltaic elements--which are confidential, thank you. They absorb much more stellar energy than the standard materials--an increase of 500%. I have a patent in progress for civilian photovoltaic nets made from the fiber. I think I’ll call it Gelltex. I tried to see if I could call it Palpatinex, but apparently you can’t copyright anything with the Emperor’s name in it.”

“How do you harvest it?” Thrawn did not care to hear any more of the administrator’s saga with the patents department. How much official time had been wasted on this absurd pursuit?

“They harvest it themselves! Such a funny thing, really, but I can’t say I’m complaining. Apparently they used to use their own hair to create solar nets for their own speeders. A dying industry, now that we’ve introduced our speeders; marvelous little things. They were blown by solar energy, not any kind of internal combustion or fission cells. Some of the less-civilized ones still power their houses with those nets.”

“I am sure the practice must go back further than that,” Thrawn said.

“Oh, there’s some claptrap about the star and collecting its gifts. They have solar power when human civilizations at their level of development were still burning dung for their cookfires and preying on cetaceans! And yet here they are, having to be dragged kicking and screaming into Imperial concordance.”

“Some species would prefer to be left to their own devices. I will be going planetside this afternoon to investigate the Wa’Runa; please make whatever arrangements are necessary so that I do not get slaughtered once I get off the shuttle.”

“You can’t use our shuttles--” Gell spluttered.

“Why, are you running a spice lab in them? The Wa’Runa, and any Rebels planetside, and anything with two brain cells to rub together will know something is wrong if one of the Chimaera’s shuttles lands. Yours, I assume, are much more commonly seen.”

It had not taken much convincing for Gell to arrange a trip; Thrawn would be going planetside for three standard days. A solar flare was expected in the early morning hours next day, and safety regulations did not permit shuttle flights (except in dire emergencies, and even then only if there was no other choice) during such an event. The length of the stay surprised him, but he had not taken shore leave for some time, and it would be nice to be planetside for a time. Perhaps he could see if the flares were at all similar to the magnetic field displays on Csilla.

“You received several messages, Grand Admiral,” the protocol droid said as Thrawn returned to his quarters to pack. “Including a message from the Imperial Archives.”

“Thank you. I will view them in my quarters.”

Of course, he first sent a message to the Chimaera, informing them of his intentions to visit the Wa’Runa and his expected time of return. Thrawn also included instructions to retrieve him should he not report from the Palpatinopolis within twelve hours of his expected return time. He did not trust Gell to rescue him if things went wrong, and there was too much atmospheric interference for his comm links to function once he went planetside.

Asun had sent him three messages, in fact. They arrived with one coded message each from Vanto, Pryce, Faro, Sloane, and Car’das. A chain letter from Brendol Hux was also included; he discarded the message and once again reported him to the ISB for misuse of Imperial comms channels. The coded messages he forwarded to the Chimaera after sending a quick reply based on the cipher--an away message, of sorts.

“Admiral, I have searched all the base pairs you gave me in the database--only one of them was ever, uh, activated,” Asun said, the recording flickering slightly. “The second human male, the one with the lower midichlorian count. The other human male sequence is present but inactive, for now; the non-human sequence was not present at all. I do have to ask you where you found the human base pairs; the midichlorian counts are sky-high. Are you sure they weren’t contaminated by anything? I had to field three hours of questions from the Inquisitors and have two blood samples taken before they let me see the pairs!” 

“I took the liberty of determining if the base pairs were active in the bioscans of outgoing shipments,” she said in the second message. “I know you didn’t ask for it, Admiral, but I felt that you would, once I had presented you with the first results. Again, only the lower midichlorian count was shipped anywhere. I’m working on descrambling the manifest and coordinates; hopefully the ISB doesn’t get me, ha ha ha.” He sighed and sent a few messages to Yularen to stall any investigations on her. 

The third message was simply a file with Gell's information, with a note informing him that she had also cross-referenced his postings with Rebel groups; interestingly enough, it appeared that several cells had formed at each of the complexes he managed. One of them had even been nearby a Pantoran colony. He sent a brief message of thanks to Asun--it was only proper--and downloaded the complex’s personnel file on Ka’Aery. The shuttle trip would take five hours, barring any unfortunate flares or other delays; plenty of time for him to work on his understanding of the problems.

Of course, the view once they breached atmosphere was more inviting than the data on Ka’Aery’s history on the complex; Achpa boasted rugged, volcanic terrain, steep mountains dusted with snow. It was rather similar to some of the geography of Csilla’s equatorial belt; he felt a slight pang of homesickness as he watched the reds and oranges of the sunset slide down the rocks and gorges. Camelids ran up and down the mountains as they descended, and the pilot waved to a young herdswoman who stood on a cliff, her braids buffeted by the shuttle’s thrusters. She waved her distaff back; a sight that would not have looked out of place in an Imperial tourism vid. Thrawn could almost hear the insipid flute music.

Their leader was already outside waiting for them the shuttle landed on the mountainside in front of her domicile. A variety of younger Wa’Runa stood behind her in a ragged crescent, dressed less richly--perhaps her handmaidens, perhaps her family. He thought he could see a resemblance in the shape of the ears and muzzle. Two of them were holding a screen in front of her, and its moire pattern caught the sunset’s light in a dazzling manner. (Of course, as Chiss vision was much better than Wa’Runa vision, he could see right through it.) 

As Gell had said, she was incredibly old, her wrinkled face ornamented with brilliant red cosmetics, and she leaned heavily on gilded and intricately carved forelimb crutches. Her overtunic was richly colored and embroidered (or woven, or both woven and embroidered) in a dizzying array of patterns, unbelted and sweeping almost to her silver-plated hooves. A bullroarer hung from the feather boa worn around her neck; she was almost completely covered in finely-engraved gold and silver ornaments. The ever-present translator droid hovered at her shoulder; a small arboreal canid sat at her side on a golden chain. One small child stood beside her, clinging to her skirts; a grandchild, he supposed, and one yet young enough to be allowed such favoritism.

“The Wa’Runa is a bit finicky,” the pilot said as Thrawn prepared to exit the shuttle. “Half the complex is counting the days until she’s finally too senile to rule and a fleabag with better ideas comes along. Try not to get on her bad side, unless you want them all sabotaging the station while you’re still in it.” 

“I thought that Wa’Runa was the species name?”

“No--well, yes. They do some Wild Space thing where the leader’s called the Wa’Runa…” The pilot trailed off as he saw Thrawn’s expression, recalling too late his origins. “Begging your pardon, Admiral.”

“Indeed. Where will the return shuttle be arriving?”

“At the marketplace in the human town. The coordinates--”

“I have them, thank you.” He stepped off the shuttle and into the mountain sunset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Ecuadorian, so of course I'm contractually obligated to make a fic with llamas and alpacas and other cultural touchstones; these next few planetside chapters are going to be filled with references to my ancestral homeland. (I mean, this is heavily inspired by "The Emperor's New Groove," so if you're surprised by the llamas, I'm not sure what you were expecting.) 
> 
> I know that the lector is more of a Cuban cigar factory phenomenon, but I couldn't help myself; there's only so much gossip and singing that can occupy one's mind while weaving and spinning.
> 
> If you want a visual for what the Wa'Runa is wearing, Google the "Lord of Sipan," and then imagine that the headgear and jewelry is being worn by an elderly llama-woman. The shepherdess is wearing traditional highland clothing--with a bowler hat over her braids, of course.
> 
> Thank you again, westiec, for graciously betaing this chapter and pointing out my continuity errors! And thank you, everyone who comments! It makes me happy to think that people are enjoying this profoundly weird addition to Rebels/Thrawn fanfic!


	4. An Audience and A Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn meets the leader of the Wa'Runa; large animals attack; there is a feast.
> 
> This chapter has some violence--animal predation, like you'd see in a nature documentary, and a character also has to handle stampeding wild animals. There is also an averted attack on a humanoid by a very large animal.

The handmaidens looked at each other, not bothering to guard their nervous expressions, as Thrawn walked towards them. Curiously, the Wa’Runa had not surrounded herself with bodyguards of any sort; then again, neither had he. (Perhaps he might come to regret this decision; perhaps it was the only sensible choice, when transport passengers were so tightly monitored to avoid radiation sickness.) Two of the taller and stronger-looking individuals set themselves in his path once he reached a certain distance, perhaps five or six flagstones away from the Wa’Runa’s screen.

“Who are you, and what is your business with the Wa’Runa?” one of them asked; even with the translator droid filtering her voice, she sounded young, perhaps not even past early adolescence. Curious, that they sent half-grown children to do an adult’s job.

“I am Grand Admiral Mitth’raw’nuruodo of the Imperial Navy,” he said, bowing his head just slightly enough for politeness’ sake while still maintaining Imperial superiority. “I seek an audience with the Wa’Runa concerning the recent events at the Palpatinopolis.”

The girl frowned and reached with one forelimb to turn off her translator droid, before hesitating. Thrawn could see the blood draining from her face, and wondered idly if she might have locked her knees. Her companion looked nervously from him, to the girl, to the Wa’Runa behind them.

“Can you say your name again, please? I don’t think I can translate it for Ha--for the Wa’Runa,” she blurted. He again wondered what had happened to the Wa’Runa that children were left as their leader’s servants, interpreters, and erstwhile guards. Even with a prejudiced view of Imperial statistics, there was nothing in the dossier that indicated the population was that badly reduced.

“Call me Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he said. “That is the shortest form I can give you, unfortunately.” Perhaps he should have led with the shortened form; he had not anticipated how differently the Wa’Runa’s vocal cords were constructed compared to humans and Chiss. 

“Frawmm. Fraw. Grand Admiral Fraw,” the girl said, doubtfully, before turning off her translator droid and turning to speak to the Wa’Runa. A clever girl; perhaps, with some growing and a little polish, she might find herself a capable trader or low-level politician. Too inhuman, unfortunately, for the Navy or the Imperial Senate. “Wa’Runa Qhapaq--”

The elderly woman raised a hand; even though she held herself with regal composure, he could tell that something had unsettled her during this conversation. Her heartbeat had sped up slightly; perhaps his reputation (whether his or Pryce’s antics that he had taken the blame for) had preceded him. “Anqash, I may be old, but my ears still work. Azarpay! Ocllo! Take the veil down.” 

The two handmaidens holding the screen nodded and began rolling it in towards the center. The Wa’Runa returned her hand to her crutches and raised herself to her full height--not precisely tall, by Wa’Runa standards, but she had probably been at least average height before age had bowed her--and looked him coolly in the eyes. That surprised him; other non-humans--even those species who had not heard of the Chiss--tended to flinch at how his eyes glowed.

“We have much to discuss, Admiral,” she said, the translator droid harmonizing with her in a plush Coruscanti accent that seemed somehow out of place. “My old bones are weary; I would like to continue this in my audience chamber.” 

“I do not see the harm in that,” Thrawn said, and followed her (along with her impressive retinue) into the warren of ashlar and adobe-brick buildings that passed for a royal residence. There, he followed the elderly being through a maze of courtyards and corridors until finally arriving into a modest reception area. A low and backless stone chair, carved in zoomorphic figures and painted with bright pigments, rested on a dais.

The Wa’Runa lowered herself onto the seat with a surprising amount of grace once she ascended the dais. She sat ramrod-straight on the stone chair, peering at Thrawn carefully. It reminded him of the surprise inspections occasionally conducted by retired syndics when they were bored. “I’m surprised they let a Pantoran wear the Admiral’s uniform,” she said after some time.

“I am not a Pantoran,” he said. 

“You’re right, you’re too much of a stuffed shirt,” she said. “Pantorans at least have a little sense of humor.” This was followed by a braying noise that must have been the Wa’Runa equivalent of a cackle.

“I did not come here to discuss what species I am,” he replied.

“No, you’re here for the abomination the Empire is building in our sky,” she sighed. Her lips curled up in disgust and anger, exposing her gnarled teeth. “Or the Republic, or whatever the out-worlders call themselves these days. It’s hard to keep them straight when they all behave similarly. Are you familiar with how the Republic came to this sector?”

“The Empire does not care for its officers to delve too deeply into Pre-Em history,” he replied. “I regret that I know only the bare minimum of information on Achpa; the dossier I was given focused more heavily on the complex, given recent events.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard an Imperial admit that he knows nothing before,” The Wa’Runa said.

“I see no point in lying to you about it; I would like to learn more about your society...about your art, too, if given the chance once my business here has concluded.”

“We’ll start with the basics, then. I, Wa’Runa Kontarwachu Qhapaq, am the daughter of the Sun and a goddess incarnate,” she said. 

Thrawn raised his eyebrows. “That was not included in the dossier.”

“Now, of course, the Empire says I’m just a mortal, and only the Emperor is a god incarnate," she said. 

Thrawn did not bother to correct her theology; although the Emperor cult was something that he found bizarre and nakedly self-centered, it was a useful tool for keeping more...primitive species in line. (How strange it was, to worship a person while they still lived, at their explicit command; surely there must have been a better outlet for the Force religion adherents.) “Of course.”

“This was all before the Empire. We were the children of the Sun; and everything that She shone on was ours--the gold and silver and doonium in the mountains; the cavies and camelids on the mountain slopes; the fish in the mountain streams; everything. My father--you would not have been permitted to be this close to him, to look upon him with your back unbowed and your eyes unshielded.” She sighed. “After all, you cannot look directly at the Sun.”

“The Republic’s Jedi troops did away with that, not the Empire--at least, it was not yet calling itself the Empire. You probably don’t remember the Clone Wars--”

“I remember them very well--I fought in them, even,” he said, and she brayed again.

“Fought in the Clone Wars! My, you’re well-preserved--or you were a child soldier, I can’t decide which is worse.”

Thrawn could not tell whether to be annoyed that she was patronizing him or annoyed that she assumed he was a child when he was fighting with the Jedi Skywalker. Ozyly-esehembo aside, the Chiss did not regularly put underage persons on the battlefield; the Empire did not seem to have such a grasp on combat standards. “I was not under the impression that twenty-seven was a child soldier.”

“Twenty-seven, Imperial, or twenty-seven, whatever-you-are?”

“Twenty-seven by the Imperial calendar. We do not age that differently from humans, even if we have a slightly longer genetic lifespan and a somewhat different physiology. The major difference is our calendar system.” He was struck suddenly by how young he had been, then; how young he was when he met Car’Das six (or was it seven) years before that; how much had changed in half a lifetime since the Jedi Skywalker had pointed out the hospital on Achpa while stubbornly insisting that he was not injured badly enough to require going there. (A lie; Skywalker had taken a blaster shot to the spleen before they had jumped into hyperspace, and Thrawn had to hit him over the head in order to take control of the ship and get him into a closer medical facility, since the human was unreasonably stubborn. Even for humans.) 

“Why do you say ‘human’ like that? You’re practically one yourself,” the Wa’Runa said, the translator droid’s chirps almost harmonizing with her more guttural speech. “You talk like one, you walk like one, you mostly look like one. You’re not even bad-looking, I think, by human standards.”

“So I have been told.” 

“You’re just, you know, blue. And your eyes glow. And you have those--” She gestured vaguely with her forelimb at her face. He could start to pick out phonemes from their speech now; of course, he would not be able to replicate them successfully. Strangely enough, they sounded rather similar to Rodian. 

“Forehead ridges,” he supplied.

“Forehead ridges,” she repeated. “Or do you just make faces too much? I keep telling my Pidru not to make such faces or they’ll stick; perhaps I should make him look at you.”

“I am afraid that your Pidru will continue making faces; these ridges are part of my skull. An adaptation for extreme cold, if you must know. However, the Emperor does not quite agree with your analysis,” Thrawn said, mostly ignoring the barb. “Officially, I am a near-human, with the...privileges that status entails. But I do agree that for most purposes, I am at least equivalent--if not superior--to humans. But this is all a digression.”

“Mm, that’s a very human attitude to have. The story behind the...abomination, and how we respond to it, is very long; what does it matter if we go off the trail every so often, as long as the story is told?” The Wa’Runa affixed him with another piercing look; no retired Syndic, her! She now reminded him of one of the fiercer elderly Aristocra matrons who would occasionally visit their patronage-clients and be honored with a tour for their troubles. There was a similar assessment behind it, a sense of carefully weighing and noting down what she found wanting--although, hopefully, there wasn’t any thought of merit adoptions or merit unions behind the way she was looking down her broad nose at him. “Admiral, how long has it been since you had food that wasn’t rations?”

“Far too long, but that is irrelevant.”

“Nonsense. You are my houseguest, and it cannot be said that the Wa’Runa Kontarwachu ever let a guest go hungry, no matter how long or short the visit. Dinner should be started now, if it hasn’t been; you won’t have too long to wait.”

“Very well, but I insist that we discuss the Palpatinopolis after the meal. With as few digressions as possible, if you please.”

“Of course, of course. Now, come help me with the llapingachos; I like to make them myself, since nobody else in my family is able to make them the right way.” It seemed that even tribal leaders and honored guests were expected to contribute to the evening meal. She hauled herself to her feet with surprising speed and began hobbling away. Thrawn saw no other option than to follow her. 

The tasks set before him were somewhat more complicated than simply assisting an elderly woman with making llapingachos. (Whatever those were; he sincerely hoped that the end result of all this was something he could eat without harm.) He had barely stepped foot into the primitive kitchen before he was suddenly accosted by various beings. 

“Ah, Anqash wasn’t kidding, he is blue! Look at that, he looks like a rock-bird egg. Are you really blue, or is it paint?”

“Huipa! You can’t say things like that! Apologize to the guest!” Another relation elbowed the first in the ribs. “Wa’Runa Qhapaq, please excuse my child’s rudeness--”

“Hat--Wa’Runa Qhapaq, why are you bringing a guest into the kitchen, it’s a mess! I am so sorry, we have been cooking since midsun--” A third individual frantically began scrubbing at a section of countertop with their apron.

“Is he going to help, or just stand there and look pretty?” yet another groused as he rolled out dough on the counter. 

“If he’s going to help, make him get the chilis,” one of them said, rubbing their back. “I can barely bend down today.” (Thrawn was not surprised by this; they were very heavily gravid. That the being could even get themselves off the stool they were sitting on would be a feat in and of itself.)

“I was going to have him harvest the rock-bird eggs,” the Wa’Runa said. “But I suppose we can have him start with the chilis. An Admiral should be able to harvest chilis.”

“You were going to have him harvest the eggs by himself?! That’s a three-person job--he at least needs a spotter, unless we want the Emperor to come to our doors asking why we let his Admiral fall off a cliff--”

The Wa’Runa’s face went pale, just for an instant; Thrawn filed this away, hoping that he might find context for this somehow. She recovered quickly, though, and waved her hand to placate the group. “Of course he would have a spotter, don’t be ridiculous. He’s an adult. He can handle a few rock-birds. I think he’s got muscle under the uniform--if not, at least he doesn’t look, smell, or move like us. That might scare them a bit.”

Thrawn deeply regretted that the dossier had not gone into detail about Achpani flora and fauna; he recalled that there were several species of birds on the planet, one of which was human-sized and had a tendency to kick interlopers off cliffs when cornered. 

“Here, go get the yellow chilis. We need a basket and a half for the aji sauce,” someone said, thrusting a woven basket into his hands. He was ushered unceremoniously out the door, and faced with a small terrace garden filled with a variety of brightly-colored chili plants. 

The actual collection of the chilis was easy; the fruits came off the vine with little effort. His attention did not wander (aside from one moment where he sampled the chili out of boredom, and found it pleasantly--if intensely--spicy), but he did find himself contemplating the stone carvings that surrounded him. They were carved with marvelous precision, painted here and there with some of the same brilliant dyes that went into the Wa’Runa’s tunic. The figures were geometric, and he could not identify all of them, but some motifs came through frequently--mostly birds and camelids. There was a serpentine motif that strongly resembled the Chimaera’s symbol, which unsettled him for reasons he wasn’t quite able to name. Soon enough, however, the basket was filled with the fruits, and he went back into the kitchen. 

“You harvested the wrong chilis,” said the individual who arrived at the counter first. “These aren’t orange.”

“You said to get the yellow chili for the aji sauce,” Thrawn said, holding up a chili in some desperation as she pushed the basket back to him. “This is a yellow chili. Why would I bring you an orange chili if you asked for yellow?”

“Oh, well, at least he knows his colors.” This was met with much merriment, and Thrawn had to squash the impulse to order a direct strike on the Wa’Runa and her household when he returned to the station. Or at least let it simmer for some time before addressing it--it was strange, to be treated in such a manner; even Thrass had largely stopped making jokes at his expense once they were past adolescence. 

“It’s not ripe--you need the chili to be orange,” the Wa’Runa piped up from where she sat next to the hearth, petting a canid.

“Then it would have been easier for you to have said to collect the orange chilis.”

“Well, we can’t put them back on the vine,” she said. “Go get the orange chilis, this time, and then Cusirimay will spot you on the cliffs. She’s very good at it--we haven’t had anything worse than a broken wrist since she’s been doing the spotting.” 

One of the individuals in the corner, who had been grinding peppers on a stone mortar and pestle, stopped her work to wave at Thrawn. He nodded as shortly as he could and went back out to the garden. 

Having collected the orange chilis this time, and washed his hands thoroughly with the hottest water he could find, Thrawn followed Cusirimay to the cliffs. The late afternoon sun was vanishing; he tried to recall if the rock-birds were more or less nocturnal or crepuscular. This was something he would have to inform the dossier’s author of, if he made it back to the Chimaera; it was the height of foolishness to assume that one’s audience would never leave the complex, and therefore did not have to know anything about the planet’s risks.

“Tie this around your waist,” she said, tossing him a rope. “Basket goes on your shoulders until you’re on the ground. You’ve climbed before?”

“Yes, but not in some time,” he said, removing his jacket before tying the rope securely around his waist. “Is the cliff face stable?”

“We haven’t had a lot of rain,” she said with a shrug. “Unless we have a temblor, I think you should be fine--if you mind where you put your hands. There are scorpions and snakes.”

“Of course there are,” he said. “How many eggs do you need?”

“Uh...half a dozen or so? Seven?” Cusirimay said.

“Seven it is,” Thrawn said, and began climbing. He had forgotten how exhilarating it was, propelling oneself upwards through hands and feet alone; when he was in his exile, he had sometimes entertained himself by climbing the cliff faces near a waterfall, and of course he had climbed the ice-walls in his youth on Csilla. There had not been many opportunities to climb, since the exile, or much time for anything that wasn’t the most basic of athletic routines. Of course, he had been more than ten--nearly fifteen--years younger when he climbed the waterfall, and more inclined to recklessness; even if he wasn’t winded by the climb, he did feel a tightness in his back that he knew he hadn’t felt years ago. Only once did he falter, when he nearly laid his hand on a bird’s nest, with small speckled eggs that were no bigger than his thumb; he hung for a moment by his other hand until he found a ledge that was less likely to result in being harried by a small animal. 

Once he pulled himself up to the top of the ridge, Thrawn saw the rock-birds among their nests. They were, unfortunately, exactly the large birds he had hoped they weren’t. Their wings were too small to support them; at least an aerial attack was not likely. The wind was blowing his scent away, for the present time; there was one nest nearby that wasn’t currently being brooded on or tended. A clutch of ten brilliantly blue eggs with almost luminous shells were resting there. But they were large eggs, as befitted such a large bird; there was no way he could unlatch the basket from his shoulders, place all the eggs in, and close and replace the basket and return down the cliff face before the wind changed, or a bird noticed what he was doing. 

Far below him, Cusirimay began screaming, but she was too far down for him to understand. There was a sudden buffet of wind, and at first Thrawn thought that a cloud had passed over the twilight sun. But the change in light was too rapid, too much, to be a cloud; he warily looked overhead, and saw a giant raptor-type bird hovering above them. Giant was, perhaps, the wrong word to use; it was truly massive, its black wings blotting out the sun. A camelid was in its claws; the animal, fortunately, was out of its misery; one less risk, one less factor. The large bird screamed, a noise that rumbled through his body like a TIE defender passing over him, and dropped the dead camelid with an appalling squishing noise. The rock-birds squawked, and began running in confusion.

Thrawn ducked behind a rock, flattening himself against the ground as much as he could. He sincerely hoped that he did not register as a prey item; being carried off to be eaten alive by a large bird was very low on his list of preferred manners to die. From his hiding spot, he could see the bird wheeling, narrowly missing one rock-bird with its grasping claws as the sunset played on the white patches on its dark, glossy wings; the unfortunate rock-bird in its panic ran itself off the cliff. Thrawn wondered if Cusirimay would have warning before it hit the ground--it would reflect very poorly upon him if his escort was squashed and he returned with no eggs. 

He saw the eggs, their blue shells shining intermittently through the kicked-up dust. The rock-birds were stampeding now, and their feet were thundering closer and closer to his hiding spot; the gusts kicked up by the raptor swept over him almost without a pause. Would he be able to snatch the eggs and make his way down without being seized or trampled? Would he even be able to simply retreat? Thrawn’s hand reached for his blaster, before deciding his combat baton might be a better choice. 

The rock-birds moved closer, and he instinctively lashed out with the combat baton. With a flick of his wrist, the birds nearest him fell, kicking their legs and flapping their useless wings frantically; the other birds seemed aware that they were now caught between two enemies, and fled away. The raptor descended, its enormous beak digging into one rock-bird’s body. 

Thrawn waited until it seemed that the raptor was too busy gorging itself to notice what he was doing, and folded the baton back into itself before he began to collect the eggs. Fortunately, the eggs were not smashed despite the adult birds’ stampede; he packed seven of them into the basket with hands that still shook slightly from the adrenaline spike. 

His luck ran out, though, right as he closed the basket and slid it onto his shoulders. The raptor looked up and screamed, gore dripping from its beak. Thrawn reached for his blaster, instinctively. The blaster would not do a great deal if the bird seized him, but the psychological relief of at least having something to fight back with could not be under-emphasized. The giant bird hopped forward, clearly less graceful on the ground, and Thrawn knew he must act or find his bones scattered on the cliff-top. 

He fired one shot, just next to the bird’s head. The bird recoiled from the heat of the blast passing by it, squawking angrily; heartened by its reaction, he fired once more. The bird shook its head and, seizing one of the dead rock-birds in its claws, took flight once more. Thrawn waited for half a heartbeat, hoping that the bird was not attempting to feint, before quickly scrambling to the edge of the cliff and beginning his descent. 

The trip back was barely recorded as he was doing it; Thrawn looked down only enough to ensure that his hands and feet were in contact with solid rock and not an animal or thin air, and moved as quickly as he could. If he moved quickly enough, he could be on the ground once more, and then it was a short walk back to the relative safety of the compound. His feet once more returned to solid ground (in poor form, but he was rather distracted), and he gave the basket to Cusirimay, who was looking at him in shock. “Seven eggs, as promised.”

“Uyy, Fraw. The kuntur--” Thrawn supposed that this was the local name for the even larger bird that had caused the rock-birds to scatter.

“Should not return for some time.”

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Cusirimay said, frantic and pale, and the two of them began walking back with just enough speed to avoid jostling the eggs. Thrawn, coming off the second adrenaline spike of the evening, could not help but smile at how narrowly he had avoided an unpleasant fate. Of course, he had nobody whom he could really share the story with--perhaps whoever had the task of filing his papers upon his death; he made a note to ask Asun how that process went--and, he realized with some disappointment, nobody would believe that such a marvelous thing had happened if he told them. 

They returned once more to the kitchen. “Hatunmama, Hatunmama,” Cusirimay cried, her braids flying wildly behind her. Thrawn noted with irritation that the translation droids had been switched off--he wished to hear Cusirimay’s tale of his exploits with the kuntur and the rock-birds. The Wa’Runa looked at him, curiously, as her young relative spoke. 

“You fought off a kuntur as it hunted,” Cusirimay said, panting, switching her translator droid back on. “You’re not supposed to be able to do that by yourself, I thought you were dead for sure--”

“Fortunately, I am not.” 

“Hatun--the Wa’Runa is very impressed with you,” she said. “We shall tell tales about you, once you’ve left. The out-worlder who fought off a kuntur!”

“That’s very nice.” He said. “Am I excused from further cooking?”

The Wa’Runa cackled. “The mouth on him!”

In the hubbub, someone exclaimed over the state of his uniform--he wasn’t particularly pleased about it, but he had had the foresight to bring an extra uniform in his pack--and he was shunted away through a maze of passages until he was in what appeared to be a laundry facility. He was handed a tunic--the fabric was so soft he almost rubbed it instinctually against his face, before remembering that such behavior was not befitting of his rank or age.

“Is there someplace I could bathe?” he asked.

“Second corridor to the left,” one of the beings said. “Just leave your uniform on the ledge, and we’ll clean it for you. Careful, the springs run hot.”

Springs! The twinge in his back from where he had landed just slightly out of proper form would certainly appreciate a quick soak in a hot spring. Once he arrived at the hot springs, he shucked his dirty uniform quickly, making sure to secret away everything he didn’t want floating about a potential nest of Rebel spies, and gratefully sank down into the hot water. (He was not at all concerned about someone seeing him--he had closed the curtain behind him, and if someone was able to see him from the opposite side of the valley, he had more important concerns, such as who might be aiming at him.) There was quite a nice view of the mountains, wrapped in fog as the first stars emerged. All that he really needed was a mug of Forvish ale, and perhaps some music; something pastoral, with plenty of flutes. But he could not afford to take his time; after a few more moments of soaking his aching back, he began scrubbing off the dirt and sweat with a vengeance. 

When he emerged from the hot springs and toweled off, he examined the proffered tunic more closely. The Chimaera's symbol was emblazoned on the breast in vivid reds and blues against the dark green of the rest of the tunic; it was stylized, heavily stylized, but clearly the Chimaera. Thrawn was not pleased with the design, but he donned the tunic anyways. The hem fell just below his knees, the sleeves to his elbows, and he realized that the garment had been made to fit a human of his height. A shiver ran up and down his spine. Something was off here, badly off, but he could not determine what; if the Rebels had arranged for an assassination, they would not have done it in such a roundabout way.

He forced himself to focus, tying the tunic with a woven belt that they'd provided after he donned his gunbelt. Appropriately-sized sandals were also provided, in another spine-crawling coincidence. His comm links and insignia he had placed in a pouch on the belt; he ensured they were there before he exited the cubicle. Fortunately, it seemed that half the complex was headed to the meal; he followed them, lost as he was in his own thoughts.

Before the meal could begin, the Wa’Runa carefully selected the choicest bits of each dish and placed them before the statue of the Emperor in the corner with a moderately deep bow. Thrawn, for his part, did not say anything about how the altar’s wear patterns suggested a different sort of deity was worshipped instead of the Emperor, or how technically, offering food to the Emperor was not part of the required obeisances. He supposed he had to be thankful that there wasn’t any prolonged ritual, and that he hadn’t been asked to participate in it. 

The meal, at least, was very good. Fried root pancakes filled with greasy white camelid cheese--the llapingachos--were drizzled with peanut sauce. There were more sauces available, if peanut sauce did not suit one’s palate, including a spicy, garlicky green sauce called aji that he had to restrain himself from taking more of. Small rolls, made from the same root and filled with the same cheese, were piled high in the center; he was only able to take one before the plate quickly emptied, and had to console himself through the rest of the meal with handfuls of pine nuts.

The llapingachos were not the main course; they were served along with fried cavy meat, camelid sausage, fried rock-bird eggs, and (in concession to health) a light salad of various wild greens and creamy stone-fruit. A small pastry sandwich, covered in powdered sugar, with a sweet filling similar to caramel, was served as dessert. 

Thrawn was unable to remember when he had last had a similar meal, jostling elbows with everybody as dishes were passed around and small children attempted to steal more dessert than they should. (How fortunate he was to have good reflexes; he did not want to have his borrowed clothing sullied with aji sauce.) 

Certainly he had not dined in such a fashion after joining the Expeditionary Force as a child cadet. The closest equivalent he could find was the last lights-return festival before he became a cadet, when his parents’ patron had in a show of largesse hosted a celebratory banquet. Even then, exulting in the end of an unusually bitter tsuzah, they had not been so exuberant; he could not imagine Chiss children climbing over the table to grab sweets as these were. He and Thrass, despite their low status and lack of polish, had not been so bold, and yet these were children of the ruling house that were flinging elbows into his face and capering about the room. 

“Admiral Fraw,” the Wa’Runa said as the plates began to be cleared away, “I have not forgotten my promise. Come sit with me on the terrace.” 

He followed the elderly woman out to yet another terrace, this one more obviously a sitting-terrace instead of a garden-terrace. The view of the mountains in the moonrise was striking. The Wa’Runa settled down with a sigh on a low chair, with the mountains at her back and the moon ascending slowly above her head like a cosmic diadem; she had sat there before, taking advantage of the natural frame. Clearly she had done this before, although it was more of an artistic effect than an attempt at intimidation. (Or he was too divorced from the culture to appreciate the significance.) The lights of the stellar engine complex could be seen reflected on the moon, pinpoints of light that could have passed as a lunar colony if he had not known better.

“Their abomination defaces even the moon,” she said. “The outworlders believe we are causing all the delays and destruction, is that what you have been told?”

“It is an entirely reasonable assumption, given your ongoing protests. Do you know anything of such activities?”

“Protests. What a bloodless word.” She looked at him, a wry grin--or what he supposed was the Wa’Runa version of one--on her face. “You are killing our mother, and we are merely protesting her murder.”

“I have been assured that there should be no significant changes--”

“There have been! You’re an outworlder--I mean no offense, but you are not of Achpa--and you only arrived here this afternoon. You don’t know what our mother looks like in her full raiment! You don’t know how she speaks to us every hour of the day, how involved she is in every aspect of our way of life. How much has changed, since the Jedi came.” Her hands and voice shook as she spoke. 

Thrawn sighed. “The Jedi are gone. Even on a planet as far from Coruscant as this, after twenty years, I would have thought that was obvious. There is only the Empire now.”

“Pah! The Empire? Just as bad,” she sniffed. “The Jedi at least pretended to care about the way things were done on this planet. Not that it ever did us any good.”

Thrawn swallowed his annoyance, and began one of the usual apologetics. “The Empire has brought stability--”

“If you’re a human!” she said. “Look at you. If you weren’t as humanoid as you are, do you think you could have become an Admiral? If we looked like your species, do you think we would be having this conversation?”

“I understand your frustrations--” Clearly the Rebels had already made significant propaganda inroads among the Wa’Runa; then again, the more non-humanoid, the less loyal to the Empire. (Thrawn could never quite box the compass of the Empire’s anti-alien policies with its simultaneous command for complete loyalty of all sentients. The Chiss, at least, had allowed for some meritocracy, especially on colony worlds; he was the only non-human in Navy command, and so few non-humans had advanced to any kind of Imperial power in the twenty years of the Empire’s existence.)

“You understand nothing!” She thumped her crutches on the ground, her ears flaring backwards. “You have not lost anything--”

“I have not seen my home planet in nearly twenty years. The Empire is all I have.” He was surprised by how much force the statement had when it came out; clearly his temper was getting the better of him.

Her eyes flashed. “And what has it given you? What has it taken from you? Sooner or later, the Emperor will turn his eyes to your homeworld, Admiral. Maybe then you might know what it means to lose everything.” 

Thrawn forced himself to take a deep breath; he could feel his blood pressure rising steadily. “I do not think we can, or will, see eye to eye on this topic. I would prefer to avoid agitating you further; if you would simply tell me about your experiences with the Palpatinopolis, and let me know where I might rest for the night…”

“You are a guest in my house, and you presume to tell me what to do.” She sniffed dismissively. “And of course you are staying in the guest quarters in the west compound. You are a guest in my house, and I have room for an army to come visit, if they choose; a sad day, that an outworlder guest thinks I might turn him out to fend for himself.”

“Thank you for your generosity. I still require an answer.”

The old woman shrank into herself for a moment, and he felt a momentary sting of conscience. She ran her fingers over one of the many gold ornaments she wore--this one, he noted, was definitely the Chimaera’s symbol inset within a larger and highly stylized sun. How strange, that his ship’s symbol was repeated throughout the complex; the theory of the collective unconscious could really only explain so much. 

“Gell has tried to overthrow me numerous times,” she murmured. “Each time he has failed. And now he sends--” 

“And now he sends what?” (He was not surprised that Gell had attempted to meddle within Wa’Runa politics; Thrawn could only imagine what a hash he had made of it.)

She looked him straight in the eyes, the intensity of her gaze a shock. “Your coming was foretold, Admiral Fraw.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course, all my Thrawn and Anakin hanging out during the Clone Wars fanon is totally jossed by Thrawn: Alliances, which I devoured in one sitting last week. Again, this story has very little relation to canon unless we find a sufficient shoehorn.
> 
> As always, my deepest thanks and admiration to westiec, for betaing and pointing out my continuity errors! I also would like to thank 13th_blackbird for inventing the delightful Cheunh phrase, "tsuzah," for the depths of Csillan winter, which I borrowed. Finally, thank you to everyone who has been reading this!


	5. The Ascent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn and the Wa'Runa make a journey through the mountains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains: canon-typical fantastic racism, canon-typical violence against marginalized peoples, and one character unwittingly consuming entheogens.

“You must be joking,” Thrawn said through clenched teeth. He had thought that his dealings with the Bendu had been the end of strange and unwanted spiritual experiences. Unfortunately, he now had a new peak for “undesired supernatural and/or superstitious nonsense.” Was he never to be free of some charlatan, escaped Jedi, or unnatural creature who claimed knowledge of him that they should never have had, and subsequently tried to inveigle him into some bizarre quest? “There is no such thing--”

The Wa’Runa’s voice was sharp. “I do not care if you believe me or if you do not. Your coming has been foretold, awaited, and prepared for.” She toyed again with the necklace’s pendant, a dreamy look on her face. “Either you will save us from a great catastrophe, or you will destroy us in said great catastrophe. The prophecy is, unfortunately, not clear on the matter.”

“Why would it be?” Thrawn sighed, rubbing his temples. “Do you ordinarily proclaim everyone you meet to be a prophetic hero? Or is this a poorly-planned distraction?”

“I thought you’d be a little more vain,” she said with a sigh. “Usually outworlders get very excited if you say they were mentioned in a prophecy. Imperials doubly so.”

“Because most beings do not have the good sense of a gnat,” Thrawn said. “Unfortunately, good sense is equally hard to come by in the Imperial Navy as it is in the rest of the galaxy. You, for example, are playing a very dangerous and foolish game when you could have simply told me whatever information you know about the sabotage. I do not know if you will like the consequences.”

“You aren’t even the least bit curious about why your ship’s mark is all over my palace?” the Wa’Runa said, unmoved by the threat.

“Of course I am. At first I thought it was an attempt to curry favor, before I saw the clearly older images on the garden terrace. However, I am more curious about whether you were the one who killed Safety Inspector Brann.”

“Brann is dead?” The Wa’Runa looked troubled. “I am sorry to hear that. What happened?”

There was no spark of anxiety, no sudden rush of blood to the extremities or increased heartbeat; the elder had either schooled herself well or was telling the truth. Thrawn did not have time to deliberate over which, and decided to needle her instead. “You have prophecies about my arrival on Achpa. Surely you must have a prophecy about what happened to her.”

“From what I heard, she was only in critical condition. What a shame. Brann was such a promising young woman.” She shook her head. “Her poor family.” 

“Your people are accused of killing her and maiming others.”

“We have hostages on the abomination,” she said. “I know the Empire does not openly play the game as we do, but we would not endanger our friends and relatives simply to make a point.”

Thrawn could not argue with her opinion of the Wa’Runa workers’ status.Taa and Ka’Aery had mentioned how secretive Gell was about them, how restricted their movements were. The only meaningful difference between the workers and some breathtakingly naive moisture farmer’s son who was spirited away by the Hutts was that the Hutts’ captives usually weren’t given reading material. 

“So you are saying that you knew nothing whatsoever about the recent explosions? That they were entirely perpetrated by outsiders?”

“My grand-nephew’s daughter, Puquioy, knew about the power fluctuations. She didn’t cause them, she just knew about them.”

“And how did she know about them? Especially considering that she worked at least five kilometers away from the explosions?” Four and three-quarters kilometers, and three levels down, to be precise, but it was close enough to five kilometers to allow himself the exaggeration.

“Puquioy’s very sensitive. If she was standing on this terrace, she could detect even the slightest change in the smallest electrical field on that mountain over there. She should be a priestess, one of the aqlla, and instead she’s spinning nets up there--”

“Please get to the point.” He hated himself for agreeing with Gell on anything, but the woman’s tendency to brag about her grandchildren was quite irritating. The complaints about her relatives’ talents being misused was the hallmark of a certain type of Aristocra. Thrawn begrudgingly tallied up what he owed the Wa’Runa and her family, in order to see what sort of quid pro quo might be necessary at the end of the mission--their remaining alive, of course, was a bit churlish to use as their sole reward. At the same time, what a fascinating skill to have, even if it was wasted. Once again, he could not understand why Gell wished to keep the Wa’Runa cloistered and spinning solar nets instead of harnessing their power for the station’s benefit. (Let alone working for the Empire’s benefit.)

“The workers are allowed to call their families every eighth day. She started feeling dizzy last moons-turn, and she kept mentioning it every call. Puquioy always feels that type of dizziness when there’s a flare or something’s sparking when it shouldn’t. It saved her life once, when the speeder she was racing--”

Yes, she was exactly like the worst sort of Aristocra, Thrawn thought. The pride and desire to share the exploits of her relatives was genuine, without a doubt, but it was a cloaking mechanism for her own assessments and plots. He hated having to wade through anecdote after anecdote to find the thread connecting them, especially when time was of the essence. He also disliked being the focus of someone else’s scheme; a petty thing to dislike, but something he disliked nonetheless. “A thrilling tale, no doubt, but I require a more direct answer.” 

“It wouldn’t go away, so after she made sure she wasn’t sick or pregnant, she told her supervisors about it. The Pantoran was the one assigned to investigate her complaint.”

Thrawn internally raised his eyebrows. So Ka’Aery knew more than she let on. He had seen the case report in her file, which mentioned only “alien(s) concerned with electrical outputs. Electrical fluctuations within standard safety levels.” Of course, he had three full standard days until he could address the matter. 

“And what was the officer’s response?”

“That she was being...hysterical.” The Wa’Runa snorted. “Hysterical! Puquioy’s the most level-headed of all my descendants. Since she was a little girl, she’s never been very imaginative, always so ruthless and practical. I mean that nicely.”

“I will not tell her that you said such a thing. Could you elaborate on what your...niece told you about the fluctuations?”

“They were very sudden.” She gestured towards Thrawn’s blasters. “If your blaster was malfunctioning, it wouldn’t happen all at once; you would have little hints that it wasn’t working. A slight overcorrection when you fired. A sticky trigger.”

This was intriguing. “And she saw no such ramping-up?”

“No. One day, everything was normal. The next day--” she made a noise which he supposed was meant to indicate strange interference; the translator droid went silent. “She couldn’t work like that, dizzy as she was. She’s home now, in the ayllu on the other side of the mountains.”

“If you would permit me, I would interview her. What sort of long-distance comms do you use--” 

“Oh, you can speak to her yourself, if you want. We’ll be going through the mountain passes tomorrow.”

“And why would we be doing such a thing? I do not have time for sight-seeing.” Or a long journey.

“You must visit the sun-shrine so that the prophecy can be fulfilled.” 

Thrawn allowed himself to raise his voice slightly. “I am tired of hearing about the prophecy, or whatever stunt you have concocted to make me agree with you--”

“I shall tell you it, if you don’t believe me.” The Wa’Runa put a hand inside her tunic sleeve and threw a handful of dust over the fire so that it sparked strange colors. 

“So. My grandmother’s grandmother had a vision, one day,” she said in an eerie sing-song. “There were warriors in crab-armor storming the firmament, extinguishing the stars.” Thrawn barely suppressed a shiver up his spine. While she could have been describing the stormtrooper uniform, it was more likely that she meant the Far Outsiders. Even the least-imaginative, least-civilized beings in the galaxy would have described the stormtroopers’ uniforms as fish-like or frog-like.

The Wa’Runa paused expectantly, and then scowled. “Were you not told stories as a child, Admiral?”

“I was waiting for you to finish whatever nonsense you were spouting,” he said.

“You’re supposed to interact, you know. What a bad audience you are.” She harrumphed again and continued her tale.

“The warriors were still on the edge of the Four Corners--” she paused. “We call this part of the galaxy the Four Corners. If you were to go to the highest peak of the mountains at noon on midsummer and look up at the sky, the sun would be at the center of the world, the stars that make her guanaco to the east, her liqlla filled with water to the west, the seven aqlla at her feet to the south with the rising sun, and her spindle to the north with the setting sun. It is surrounded by a river of falling stars.”

“Fascinating,” Thrawn said. “A guanaco is--”

The Wa’Runa pointed at a tapestry depicting a camelid. “That is a guanaco. They are a gift from Our Mother herself, meant to assist us with milk and meat and wool and carrying heavy burdens.”

Thrawn did not comment on how much she resembled the tapestry. “And what are the aqllas? You have mentioned them a few times over this conversation.”

“Brides of the Sun,” the Wa’Runa said. “Every year, I choose the most beautiful girl-children on the planet and have them start training to be priestesses. When they come of age, they either continue as priestesses, but in different temples, or marry various persons of high rank. Nowadays, some of them simply return to civilian life. In the very old days, we used to sacrifice some of them when their terms were up.”

“For what?” Thrawn asked. “Better harvests?”

“We would sacrifice the aqllas for better harvests, to stop the lightning, when the Wa’Runa died or had a child or went off to war. The usual things one would sacrifice for.” She sighed. “Of course, we don’t sacrifice sentients now. We don’t even sacrifice animals very often anymore. The last time someone in the hills sacrificed a white llama to fend off earthquakes, the Imperial officials got upset.”

That had been included in the dossier, under “known primitive behaviors.” The Emperor had reacted rather strongly, in his opinion, and sent several of the local tribal leaders to a reeducation camp on one of the moons of Hoth. It hadn’t even been related to the suppressed Jedi or Force cult, from what the dossier had been able to determine, just a common “primitive” building luck ritual. There was an increasing tendency for the Emperor to crack down harshly on these sort of metaphysical offenses; none of the High Command were able to determine why this might be so. 

“The Emperor has his own reasons for that,” Thrawn answered. “Please continue.”

“As I was saying, the warriors were still on the edge of the Four Corners, well away from the river. But the plains-wind had heard of them in his travels, and he said ‘Aha! Here is something that can help me overpower the Sun!’” As if on cue, the wind rose in the valley, with an eerie howling. Thrawn reached to stoke the fire, which had ceased sparking and flashing strange colors. 

“Thank you, these old bones aren’t as good with the cold as they used to be,” the Wa’Runa said. “So the plains-wind said to the warriors, ‘What is your purpose here, strangers?’”

“Enough,” Thrawn said, quietly slipping a hand into his weapons pouch and disabling the bugs he was not supposed to know about. (The ISB had failed to account for his own superior vision and hearing when bugging his uniform. While he relished the mild challenge of evading their spying, it also unnerved him that the spymasters had done their jobs so poorly.) Even so, there were precautions he should take. “I am--do you speak Sy Bisti? And would you need the translator droid to understand it if I spoke it to you?”

“I understand it by myself,” the Wa’Runa said through the droid. “Is there something you wish to share?”

“I am aware of the Far Outsiders--you may know them as the Yuuzhan Vong. You do not need to tell me that they are a danger to all life in the galaxy. I am trying to convince the Emperor to turn his attention to them, if we must quash the Rebels first.” He had been running simulations on the sly, to see whether the Empire and the Ascendancy--even half to a quarter of the Empire’s full strength, should the Rebels prove intractable--could defeat the Far Outsiders. The simulations were showing increasingly grim results. His latest simulation had predicted victory over the Far Outsiders by the slimmest of margins, with casualty rates that would have meant doom for both societies. A quiet word with Ar’Alani had proven that the Ascendancy was becoming less sanguine about their prospects even if the Empire and various Rebel factions joined them whole-heartedly and pursued a total war. There was even some debate among the Aristocra about evacuating the colonies to Csilla and the ‘home worlds.’ (That the Aristocra even considered this as a solution concerned him more than he could say.)

“The Emperor is in league with them,” the Wa’Runa said casually but with distaste, as if discussing which neighbor had gotten drunk and made an ass of himself at the last garden party. She had switched the settings on the droid, who was replying in Sy Bisti with the same out-of-place accent. “Do you think someone with his reach would not be aware of such a threat?”

The thought had occurred to Thrawn, and to his contacts in the Ascendancy. But they had made the critical mistake of assuming that the Emperor’s vanity and megalomania would have been stopped cold by the Vong’s threat. Worse, Thrawn had continued in that error, even after seeing how the Emperor would cling to foolish ideas in the hopes of bolstering his own ego; Project Stardust was one such example. He cursed himself for a fool. 

“I have been...unwilling to accept the possibility,” he replied, begrudgingly. “But do you have proof that he is in league with them? Dreams and visions and tales of long-ago-in-a-distant-land are not proof of anything except the enduring power of the sentient imagination.” 

“Come with me to the mountains,” the Wa’Runa said. “Your proof will be found there.” She shivered and wrapped her cloak tighter about herself. 

“It is well past the time for me to go to bed. I will be leaving at first light for the highest peak,” she said as she rose, in a tone that brooked no argument. “If you wish to find your proof, it would be wise of you to come with me. On the way back, we will speak to my great-niece.” 

Thrawn sat for a time on the terrace after she’d left, watching the stars wheel overhead. He was going to have to follow the Wa’Runa into the mountains; clearly he could not get results otherwise. But there was a sense of foreboding he could not shake off, even once he had been shown to the guest quarters and had ensconced himself in some incredibly warm blankets. It was not the usual pre-mission nervous anticipation. There was something strange in the air, in the very stones of the mountains surrounding him. Perhaps it was merely the increased ionization from the stellar storms affecting him. 

The next morning, his uniform was freshly laundered and hanging on a hook outside his door; Thrawn instead chose to wear the dark green forest-combat uniform he had packed--no use making himself more of an obvious target than he already was. A lined woven poncho and a coordinating knitted hat had also been included on the hook. The chill was mild, comparable to a warm summer day on Csilla, but they were going into the mountains, and Imperial uniforms were notorious for neither retaining heat in the cold nor keeping the wearer cool in the heat. Of course, upon shaking the poncho out--it never hurt to ensure that spiders and other unwanted guests weren’t taking up space in one’s clothing--his brow furrowed as he realized that the Chimaera’s logo was woven into the fabric, flanked on the half-drop by something that was either a Loth-cat or some kind of bird.

He could barely see the sun breaking over the horizon. Dense fog surrounded the mountains, condensation dripping in thick beads off the vines on the balcony. Thrawn donned the poncho, but put the knitted hat in his breast pocket before heading to the stables. He was not going to go completely ‘native’ unless he had to.

Once Thrawn had arrived, he was given a guanaco (slightly stronger and taller than the others, in concession to his height) and a woven blanket as saddle. “You can’t reach the temple via skycraft,” the handler told him. “It’s disrespectful to the Sun.” The Wa’Runa was already being helped onto another guanaco by her sons. This was a rather violent affair, judging by how one of them had already been kicked in the eye when the other had accidentally let his grasp on the guanaco’s reins slip. 

Thrawn looked dubiously at the guanaco--a cream-and-russet spotted female, with large brown eyes that looked at him with a dull intelligence, the sort of dull intelligence which usually signified an animal hell-bent on causing chaos. “I hope you are at least half as manageable as a tauntaun,” he said to the beast, carefully placing the blanket. 

“Have you ridden before?” the handler asked him. He had an amused look on his face, clearly expecting an Imperial with no knowledge of animals, and was most likely carrying bets from his compatriots at the stables as to how long before Thrawn was sporting bruises and cuts from guanaco kicks.

“I have ridden tauntauns,” he said. “Giant and standard sizes. And I did ride a bolotaur, once.”

“Oh,” the handler said, curiosity overcoming his irritation. “You rode a bolotaur? I thought they were extinct! What was that like?”

“It was several years ago now, on Kashyyk; the bolotaurs may very well be extinct, which would be a shame. There is no real comparison to riding other beasts; they are lizards, so the motion is very different to tauntauns or wampas or other riding creatures. More of a violent lurching from side to side than a gallop or trot. It is very difficult to keep one’s mount, especially when they’re going through moult. There is a distinct tendency to forget they have a rider, followed by attempts to scratch themselves senseless on the underbrush. And one must watch out for the tails. I saw many riders unseated by a bolotaur trying to flick flies away.” Thrawn said as he placed his hands gently but firmly on the guanaco’s withers and swung himself onto the blanket-saddle with ease. There was no harm in indulging the handler’s curiosity. 

“If you get the chance, do try riding one. The Wookies make a party game out of who can remain on a bolotaur bull in must the longest.” 

“W-what happens when they’re in must?” the handler asked.

“They get very spirited and try to throw off their saddles so they can fight for mates. If one is attending a very good party by Wookie standards, there will be two bulls in the ring, and it turns into a competition to see who can remain on the bolotaur the longest while knocking one’s competition out of their saddle. It is a very violent game.”

The guanaco bleated slightly in protest, but did not attempt to throw him. “Oh, shh, shh. There’s a good girl,” he murmured as he soothed the animal, barely stopping himself from lapsing into Cheunh. He practiced nudging the animal’s ribs with his heels, noting the glum look on the handler’s face. He so enjoyed spoiling others’ bets. Meanwhile, the Wa’Runa had finally been helped onto her guanaco, and was berating one of her sons through clenched teeth. The other had fallen into a pile of dung, and was cursing quietly as he attempted to scrape the coating of filth off his face.

The climb to the temple was lengthy; at first, Thrawn thought that the guanacos were a concession to the Wa’Runa’s fragility, before the reliefs on the road walls showed him that such transport appeared to be standard. Certainly it would have been a very long trip by foot. They broke frequently to allow them to adjust to the altitude. Thrawn felt that the Wa’Runa needed the breaks more than he did, and he wondered for a moment what the protocol would have been if she had collapsed from altitude sickness. (This was not to say that he was not feeling any effects, but he was much younger than she was, and most likely in better condition. He could put up with the discomfort and unpleasant sensations if it meant he would be done with this benighted mission sooner.) On one such break, the Wa’Runa passed him a gourd of water and a parcel of hard cheese; they sat and ate, watching the guanacos graze.

“Fraw, aren’t you cold?” she asked, dabbing at her mouth with her shawl, which she was using as a napkin.

“I am fine. My home planet is much colder than this,” he said. 

“Your ears are blue. Put your hat on.”

“Everything is blue,” he said, and regretted it once she waggled her eyebrows at him. “Madam, really.”

The fog did not lift as they climbed, instead becoming denser. The guanacos were not as shy as other creatures, and continued plodding along the stone path without pause. His ability to see the infrared spectrum did not necessarily help the worry that the guanacos might blithely lead them off the narrow road and into a freefall; with the fog and the chill, everything was an almost uniform shade of blue or purple. There was an increasingly obvious faint drone as they ascended, whose source he couldn’t place. It echoed strangely off the rocks, and at times it was strong enough that he felt that there was someone (or something) whispering in his ear in an unknown language. The noise almost had a physical presence; he had to fight to keep himself from turning and responding to the unknown speaker. It was unsettling, and yet the Wa’Runa (and the guanacos) continued along as if nothing were the matter. 

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for the fog to lift?” he asked the Wa’Runa, after they had barely navigated one hairpin turn.

“Ha! It won’t lift,” she said. “These are the cloud paramos. You won’t get a clear day at this altitude until the dry season, and we’re six moons-turns away from that. What, is the Grand Admiral worried that I’m driving him over a cliff?”

“I am simply concerned that we are wandering aimlessly,” Thrawn said. 

“We aren’t,” she said. “I know these roads as well as I know my own face. Besides, can’t you hear the hum?”

“Of course I can,” he said. “But I do not know what it means.”

“That is the sun,” she said. “She’s talking to us. Her voice will get louder as we draw nearer to the temple.”

“And what is she saying?” Thrawn asked, half-expecting a serious answer. 

“That you should listen to her yourself, and not make me translate for you.” The Wa’Runa laughed. “I can’t tell you what she’s saying to you, Fraw. I can only hear what she’s saying to me.”

“Then what is she saying to you?” he said, rolling his eyes.

“That’s private,” she said, with childish glee.

As they ascended further, the drone became even louder and more present, and Thrawn soon had the uncomfortable feeling of someone watching him in addition to the half-heard whispers. Occasionally, there would be a word or two of Cheunh among the buzz, or a change in the perception of the whisper that reminded him of Eli or Pryce or Thrass’ voice heard from a distance, but nothing that was intelligible or relevant, nor anything that he could immediately brush off as a hallucination from the mild sensory deprivation of the fog and the increasingly hypoxic air; it was the most maddening feeling. He did not put much stock in superstition--if he did, would he have shot the Bendu?--but there was a small part of him that felt he had encroached on sacred ground, and was now being weighed and found wanting. 

Soon they approached a massive stone arch in the mountain pass, half-shrouded in fog. “We are almost there,” the Wa’Runa said. “Throw away your blaster.”

“Why?” Thrawn asked. 

“This is the Sun’s home on earth. No weapons or blades are permitted in her presence,” the Wa’Runa said patiently, as if speaking to a petulant child. 

“Must I throw it away?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Sighing, Thrawn took the blaster from its holder and, after removing the cartridges, threw it as far as he could. He did not hear an echo for almost a full standard minute.

“The cartridges too, Fraw,” the Wa’Runa said. Those he pitched as well, although with less force this time. Only when the echoes had stilled did the Wa’Runa spur her guanaco again. They traveled in relative silence for some time after that, the only sounds aside from the drone their guanaco’s footfalls on the stone road. Thrawn tried to clear his mind of the annoyance of having to lose his weapon. He would find some way to excuse it during the debriefing, but it irked him. The fog was gradually lifting, but the whispers and feeling of being watched remained. 

They soon came to another archway, this one somewhat more ornate than the first. Two young acolytes were sitting there, near some hitching posts. Their white robes and dark fur made them stand out boldly against the almost uniform greyness of their surroundings. They bowed, then made a strange gesture with their mouths as if they were blowing kisses to the Wa’Runa. She turned to Thrawn. 

“We need to leave our guanacos here, and take up a pack ourselves. We cannot enter the presence of the Sun without carrying a burden.”

“Why is that?” Thrawn asked as he dismounted the guanaco, giving the animal one final pat on its withers. One of the acolytes came over and took the reins from him, looking at him with open curiosity.

“We cannot enter her presence unencumbered,” she said. The other acolyte gave them each wooden pack-frames, with a small bundle of elaborately carved and embellished sticks on them; Thrawn shouldered his with some resignation. There was no reason that he could see for the Wa’Runa not explaining the rituals of visiting this temple beforehand, unless she was attempting to keep the balance of power in her favor for as long as possible. 

“Let us proceed, then,” he said once the Wa’Runa had taken on her own burden. He had to walk more slowly than he was accustomed to, in order to keep pace with the elderly being (and to be in reach should she stumble. He did not wish to think of what would happen to him if she suddenly had an attack of vertigo and fell off the cliffside). The stretch for his tired muscles was welcome, but to travel on foot, in an unfamiliar area with difficult surroundings, and without his blaster or his comms, made him nervous. Soon, the sheer cliff face on his left became replaced by stonework, the same that lined the retaining wall of the path to their right; the road’s bricks, already finely carved and placed, became of finer work still. Suddenly, they were in a courtyard surrounded by buildings, a minor summit on the mountain. He could see another building, higher up on the peak, gleaming in the sun, and the Wa’Runa sighed when she saw it. 

“This climb gets longer every year,” she said, before squaring her shoulders and continuing along the path. Thrawn followed her, as he had no choice but to do so. Despite the mountainous terrain, the grade was relatively smooth; still, considering the hypoxic air and the extreme elevation, the climb was not easy. But trudging along through the warren of buildings, so similar to the complex the Wa’Runa inhabited, Thrawn could see glimpses, here and there, of the beings who lived there. 

Courtyard after courtyard was filled with beings; some weaving, some spinning, others chattering among themselves as they ground corn on slabs of stone or plucked birds. Here, there was ornamentation in abundance. Ochre and gold was daubed along carvings, festively dyed and woven and embroidered wool embellishments were tied or sewn or woven into the straps of the beings’ carrying-baskets. The motifs this time no longer contained the serpent. Instead, there were suns with faces and stepped frets carved into the walls and woven into fabric and tattooed on beings’ faces. Children peered at him curiously from behind thick woolen curtains in the trapezoidal archways. All the work was done by hand. There was not a glimmer of technology more advanced than a stone blade in this hidden sanctum. 

Soon, though, the signs of life retreated beyond the doorways and visible courtyards; it was as though they were walking through a mausoleum. Not even canids or felids disturbed the silence; if it weren’t for the pristine grooves in the stone, Thrawn would have thought that they had entered a ghost town. The temple, however, loomed ever larger before them, gleaming in the sun brightly enough to dazzle the unaware. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of walking, an eternity of smooth stone and corbeled arches, they arrived in the forecourt of a massive temple complex. There were signs of life here, but not enough to ease the foreboding Thrawn felt. The temple that the Wa’Runa had brought him to had an excellent view of the peaks and valleys surrounding them, once they had entered the forecourt proper; the stonework was incredibly fine, gleaming granite blocks polished until Thrawn could see his reflection in them as he passed. They did not stop to marvel at the view, though; they continued along to a massive rectangular building with enormous trapezoidal arches along the facade. 

How interesting, Thrawn thought, that even the Wa’Runa’s most impressive architecture still resembled the humblest of the homes they had passed on their way up the mountain. The only thing differentiating it from the Wa’Runa’s complex was its immense size, as the blocks were large enough Thrawn doubted he could wrap his arms around one if he chose to do so, and the strange corbeled dome where the Wa’Runa’s complex had a steeply and asymmetrically gabled roof.

“What does that shape signify?” Thrawn asked the Wa’Runa as they drew closer. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “Long ago, the sages and priestesses--they weren’t called the aqlla then--lived in such buildings. There’s a recreation of one in the capital, made of tufa-rocks. Perhaps my ancestors wished to remind them where they started?”

“Hmm,” Thrawn said. 

Soon enough, they were inside the building; it was surprisingly dark within for a temple devoted to a star. A great oculus shone through the hole in the corbeled dome of the ceiling, allowing the sun to illuminate a ritual path through the temple. The joints were highlighted with gold, with such a thin application of golden mortar that he was convinced it was merely an ornament. What skill the Wa’Runa builders had! The sheer uniformity of the massive blocks was unparalleled. 

Only niches for bejweled and finely-dressed skeletons interrupted their continuity; some holding spindles and distaffs, others spears and shields, a few with large spiraling shells or gleaming twin staves in their forelimbs. “My ancestors,” the Wa’Runa said proudly, making that strange bowing-blowing-kisses gesture to each of them as she passed them by. Thrawn simply nodded his head to the corpses, as if in greeting. The hum was now so loud he had to focus intently to remain aware of other noises. Part of his mind felt like it was slipping away out of his reach, another part like a being was going through it gently but thoroughly with a fine-toothed comb. (Rather similar to being in an audience with the Emperor, although the Emperor’s mental probing was much less subtle.)

Before they had reached the oculus, a group of aqllas came from a well-hidden side chamber and stopped before them. None of them had translator droids; he supposed that the priestesses did not much mingle with off-worlders. Some of them looked at him with thinly-veiled curiosity, especially the younger priestesses. The elder members were better about hiding their intentions, but showed no less interest. One of the elder priestesses, a woman about Thrawn’s age with thick streaks of grey in her hair and fur, gestured towards him impatiently, saying something in their language that he couldn’t follow.

“You’ll need to change your clothes,” the Wa’Runa said. “You can’t wear anything with a seam if you want to go further into the sanctuary.” She gestured to her own garments, and that of the aqllas; a length of fabric was wrapped around their bodies with the ends tucked in tightly at their sternums, with an uneven rectangle of fabric thrown over their shoulders for additional warmth.

Thrawn looked down at his poncho. Even if the seam up the center, which concealed a small pocket, and its tacked lining had not disqualified it, it would not have kept him decent, having nothing to hold it up. “You could not have told me this earlier?” Thrawn hissed. “I have put up with a great deal of nonsense in the past few days. I will not be roaming about undressed--”

“They’ll have something for you to wear,” she answered. “This is a temple, not a cabaret. Really, Fraw, you Imperials have some strange ideas about comportment.”

Two of the younger priestesses presented Thrawn with a bundle of fabric. Another priestess, who looked to be about the same age as Pryce (if a good deal less severe; he could not imagine Pryce cloistered away like this), pointed him towards a barely-distinguishable nook in the stone with a small curtain in front of it. She held out her hand for his rank pips, and Thrawn grudgingly complied. He hoped they would return to him without any bugs or secret containers of poison attached. 

“No seams, no laces, no buttons, no pins,” the Wa’Runa said before he headed off to disrobe. “No double knots, either.”

The fabric, unfortunately, was very narrow once he’d unfolded it and given it a good shake. Thrawn wondered if this was some form of ritual humiliation, or if it were simply an attempt to throw him off his rhythm so that he would be more agreeable to their demands. It was a useless train of thought, of course; he simply had to “roll with the punches,” as Vanto would have put it. He stepped out of his uniform and boots, and stood for a few moments in the cold, surprisingly dark chamber, trying to center himself with the distracting drone swelling in his ears and almost reverberating in his chest. 

Thrawn sighed and began pulling the fabric around himself. Eventually, he emerged, having fashioned it into something that would mostly preserve his modesty, if he didn’t take any running leaps, or take too many deep breaths. The prohibition on ties and knots was a fine hamper on his ability to keep the slippery camelid-fiber fabric in position. Of course, he was now a good deal colder than he had been earlier. At least nobody he knew was here to see him in such an undignified costume. One of the aqllas took his uniform, boots, and poncho away, and threw them into a fire. Thrawn could not repress a wince, imagining riding back to the Wa’Runa’s complex in nothing but a hastily-tied loincloth. How was he going to explain that in the debrief? Uniform damage was one thing, but the wholesale destruction of his entire forest camouflage kit! He had just had those boots re-soled, too. The part of him that still lived in poverty in Csapla was aghast at the waste.

“Oh, don’t pout like that,” the Wa’Runa said, elbowing him in the side. “You still have your little medals. Or you will when this is over.”

“You cannot expect me to visit your grand-niece in this,” he said.

“She’s married. Nothing she hasn’t seen before. You can borrow her husband’s clothes if you’re so uncomfortable, he’s skinny like you are. Now come on, we’re going to miss the apogee.” With that, she said something to the aqllas, and one of them began leading them towards the oculus as the others vanished into the surprisingly dark shadows of the corbeled dome. Only one, a very young priestess who perhaps was still in training, remained with them; she took the Wa’Runa’s arm.

The blinding light of the sun through the oculus had obscured a set of stone stairs, their mortar inlaid with gold as everything else in this complex was. The stairs descended in a tight, if awkward spiral down into darkness. The purpose of the second escort had become clear; the steps were very narrow, and the roaring drone in his head made him walk with increased care as he followed the priestesses and the Wa’Runa. Thrawn found it increasingly hard to concentrate on his surroundings. Perhaps it was the increased stellar energy creating a sub-sonic wave. It was a surprising effort to concentrate on walking the stairs without danger.

They descended deeper and deeper, until Thrawn thought that perhaps they were entering the very belly of the mountain. Once or twice he dared to look up and see how far they’d come; the uniformity of the stonework, and the bright light of the sun, gave him no navigational clues. He knew he’d walked at least three standard flights of stairs, perhaps more than that; his ears had popped once or twice. 

Finally, though, they ceased their travels. The stonework and the steps leveled out, replaced by a densely-packed floor of ochre pigment. They came to a stop at a boulder with a pinhole, which the aqlla muscled back with surprising force to reveal a very narrow entrance to a cave, wide enough for one humanoid to walk through at a time. The aqlla walked in first, then the Wa’Runa closely followed by the acolyte-page, and finally Thrawn squeezed his way through the passage. If he were inclined to claustrophobia, he would have been in a predicament. Fortunately, he had no more than the usual aversion to tight spaces, and so inched his way through the darkness. It was a near-total blackness, as their bodies had blocked the light as they made their way forward. This had to be leading to a ritual chamber; why else the disorienting climb and the sharp transition to darkness?

Soon, they came to a small clearing, where there was a massive slab of fine white quartz blocking their path. Thrawn could see the sun’s corona projected upon the quartz, the serpentine ropes of plasma on its surface flickering as if they were dancing to unheard music, and the drone intensified. Somewhere, there was water dripping from a stalactite; the cave was impossibly, unnervingly still, and it resounded in the chamber like a drum. 

The child bowed before them, her loose braids touching the floor and picking up ochre, and scurried away. She returned soon after to provide the priestess with a large hollow gourd filled with a syrupy, golden liquid, before fully prostrating herself before them. The elder priestess took a small sachet from the folds of her gown and sprinkled it over the gourd, murmuring something that had to be an incantation, and then sank into a deep bow as she placed the container in the Wa’Runa’s hands. The Wa’Runa replied--Thrawn was so distracted he could not pick out the phonemes--and the priestess and the acolyte rose without brushing the ochre off of themselves. The two of them vanished once through the entrance, to return to the upper air. Thrawn could see their shadows retreating on the wall, and felt an increasing amount of dread. The stone was rolled back in front of the passage, and now the light was focused on the quartz as if it were a projector. 

“Chicha,” the Wa’Runa said by way of explanation as she raised the gourd to her lips and drank a deep draught of the liquid. “It’s safe for humans to drink.”

Thrawn received the gourd gratefully. He was surprisingly thirsty after the long descent, and perhaps a drink would keep his head from swimming so. Having taken an initial sip, he was surprised by the taste. Corn, sweet corn, mixed with a strong malt; he was reminded of the ritual lichen brew that was passed around to those of age at suns-return festivals. Everyone, from the most rarefied member of the Aristocra to the lowliest of fungus-farmers, would drink of it, and drink deeply. The sense-memory was so strong that for a moment he thought he was once more back on Csilla, in black and maroon, passing the vessel to Thrass as Ar’Alani rose from where they all sat to join in the dancing. The familiar tauntaun-kick of homebrew alcohol followed as soon as the liquid hit his tongue. The mysterious brew was so strong that he realized he was going to have a marvelous hangover the next morning.

“Enough, Fraw,” the Wa’Runa said, and he put the gourd down.

“What in the galaxy is in this?” he asked, aghast, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Are you making moonshine in your temples? The Empire has regulations about that, even if there is some leeway for sacramental beverages--”

“Corn,” she replied. “Just corn. Oh, and some snakeplant honey to sweeten it. And a little thorn-apple for flavor.” 

“Thorn-apple? Snakeplant?” He racked his brain, trying to remember the dossier’s list of flora (something which had been unusually well-documented). There had been a number of entheogens listed, and it was surprising how often the common name “thorn-apple” was applied to those plants. Snakeplant--oh, that too had been listed too many times for him to remember which entry was appropriate, especially with the dulling effect of alcohol and the ever-louder roaring in his ears. There had been an additional entry under “snakeplant” for a plant that had some alarming effects when ingested, but more toxic than psychedelic. “Are you absolutely certain that this is safe to drink?”

“It clears the mind,” she said. “Allows us to see our mother as she really is. Sometimes someone drinks too much and they see a little too clearly, but that’s rare. You’d have to drink a full vessel of the stuff, all by yourself, and you’d get sick before you did that. But it does tend to make humans a little loopy,” the Wa’Runa said with a careless flick of her forelimb. “It should be fun to see what effect it has on you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chicha, in the real world, does not contain anything more than corn (or, depending on the brew, pineapple rind or sugar). However, it's still an alcoholic beverage and should be consumed responsibly by persons of legal age. 
> 
> I sincerely apologize for the delay on this chapter; it was an absolute bear to write. I once again would like to thank westiec for graciously beta-ing and cheering me on, and all of you who have bookmarked and commented on this!

**Author's Note:**

> I could not resist giving Thrawn an actual Pantoran to interact with. The Suns Cult is entirely of my own creation and will be explored further in the future, if I get around to it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please feel free to comment!
> 
> Finally, I would like to thank westiec for graciously beta-reading this chapter. Additionally, most of the alien names were generated via the Fantasy Name Generator, without whom I would just steal names from Star Trek and file off the edges a little.


End file.
